Lessee, Day 3 we had more people at the Kawasaki household (their daughter Sho and granddaughter Yuu) and we all went to the hot springs. I was the one who wanted to go and they all indulged me. I don’t have any pictures because people who want pictures of old Asian dudes have their own web sites and I don’t want to be one of them. Anyway, afterwards I think we made several trips to the shopping center and I had ice cream more than once. Until Nov 1, there are Hallowe’en presents you can win at Baskin & Robbins (or 31 as it’s known here) and I want more than the black cat pen I got.
We did score some odd Pepsi Mont Blanc and some chocolate.
We also saw some weird jellybeans.
Today was more shopping and stuffing some more ice cream down my gullet. So far we only got another pen (which we gave to Yuu). So much for that. I bought a Japanino in a “Otonanokagaku” mook (magazine book) and I’m busy screwing around with that. Geek city. Time to reboot.
Well, the lack of sleep finally caught up to me and I slept for about 9 1/2 hours last night, after passing out after dinner for a while. 6 hours in two nights is a little short. I didn’t get to sleep until 1AM yesterday and then my mom woke me up at 7AM. We had until 10AM before our friend came to get us, but that’s just the way my mom is.
Yesterday was another travel day, but in a car. 10AM – 12PM was travel to the apple orchard owned by some relative of my mom’s friend who was driving us in her Prius.
Japanese apples are incredibly sweet and giant. Not the kind of thing you just pick up and eat.
12PM – 5PM was on the Japanese highways, through the Japan alps I think, and then along the Japan sea coast. Beats working. I could have taken more pictures, but the weather wasn’t great. And pictures out the car window aren’t much to look at.
Now we’re in Toyama and there’s a big sale at Uniqlo. Time to go!
OK, so it’s not a full day, and it’s 1AM here. 11 1/2 hours of flying, three and a half hours on a bus, and then it was off to dinner at 10PM here. Monjyayaki, just like last year.
I’m just uploading a couple of pictures before I really crash. It’s 9AM and a day and a half after I left the US now. I feel safe because my room is by the fire exit.
I remember what I was thinking of before. I got an email telling me that my LA Fitness membership was expiring and that I should renew my membership. I think that means it’s now three years since LA Fitness took over my old gym, and three years since I’ve been to LA Fitness. Yeah, it was a waste of money, but whatever.
I’m not sure how people come up with the stuff we do at the gym, but they’re always coming up with new things. Sometimes it does get a little stale, but that’s mainly because there are exercises that I hate to do. Ever thought about doing broad jumps while wearing a giant rubber band?
Yeah, I’m funny looking. Deal with it.
There was something else I was going to mention, but I can’t remember quite what it was. Heck, there was something I was going to look up on the intarweb and I can’t remember what that was, either. I’m coveting the same digital camera my sister is (the Panasonic Lumix GF1) but really I hardly take that many pictures. And I just bought a new camera last year, didn’t I? Or was it two years ago? Either way, I have a silly little digital camera that I can’t really sell on ebay because all the menus are in Japanese. Ah, well.
So there you have it. I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I am leaving for Japan in two days!
It was a horrible day outside. We’re finally heading into winter, so that means rain until we get a nice week in February or something. That’s not quite true, but at least it mostly keeps the Californians out. In any case, it was a good day to hole up and finish watching last weeks TV and some football games. The only responsible things I did were to pay bills and take my ballot down to the library. If nothing else, it should reduce the number of annoying phone calls I get.
Unfortunately, I think it might reduce the my total number of phone calls to NOTHING, but I suppose it’s better than having to listen to people try to influence my vote. Too late, I’m a yellow dog democrat.
So, I switched to Comcast about a week-and-a-half ago, and in a week I’d downloaded 79G which is 31% of my download limit. Wow. And I’m not even sure that’s as much as I could be doing. I haven’t signed up for Netflix streaming or done any external backups of my computers. I’m just guessing that a 250G cap is not enough for geeks.
I’m still in the middle of catching up with last week’s TV shows even though there were a lot of shows missing because of baseball. My DVR locked up and I had to try watching the shows online so that added even more to the amount I downloaded. I should probably take it easy since I went to see Fred the massage guy and he found all sorts of weirdness, like my mid-back muscles being locked up as well as my calf muscles. Not exactly where I was expecting it, but that’s where we found it. Oh, well.
I’m not sure what I can say about my week. I know I’ve stuck my foot in it a couple of times and that’s just the way it goes. Fortunately, however, I am going on vacation and maybe everyone will forget what a loudmouthed lout I am.
I’m also very sore from going to the gym. I wonder if there’s any point where I won’t be sore from going to the gym, but I think if that day were to come it would have been when I was much younger. Of course I’m not very sensible and was probably the only one doing Tyler’s 30 birthday burpees this week, but someone’s got to do them, right?
Well I’m close to incoherently tired right now and I think I need a plan. So the plan is to go on vacation next week (no kidding) and to possibly see a movie this weekend and possibly eat at Little Big Burger. And get a massage tomorrow. Most of this is already on the schedule. Not bad.
I sure don’t have much to say since I’ve been spending most of my evenings reading a bunch of comic books. I gave them up cold turkey a long time ago and now they’re mysteriously falling off the intarweb onto my computer screen. When I was growing up I used to become entranced with comic books and it was hard to get my attention. I know it took three repetitions of a question to get my attention. I still have that problem today, even with comic strips in the newspaper.
In any case, it’s what I’ve been doing.
I guess I could make a comment about the tasty hamburger I had at Tasty and Sons on Saturday, but it was a bit too salty. The rest of the meal was excellent, but the burger was only very good. Comparing it to Five Guys seems like comparing real food to candy, but I’m not sure which I’d rather have. I suppose it comes down to the circumstances and whether the burger is the only reason I’m going out to eat.
I’m so hungry right now all I can think of is the FIve Guys burger. I better stop before it keeps me up. I have my comics for that.
I left work early today to try to get my network working better and I think I’ve decided that eight hours of monkeying with cheap Linksys routers, trying to get them to do my bidding, is about as much as I can stand. I’m trying to get a bunch of VMs going, and I’m on my way, but it was more setup crap than I expected. My network is still a mess but limping along is better than not working at all.
Another exciting Friday night, too. I watched House, Lie to Me, Hawaii 5-0, Castle, Glee, NCIS, NCIS L.A., Terriers, Modern Family, and Cougartown. I think I would have gotten drunk if I wasn’t too lazy to go to the liquor store but I did something even more pathetic – I started shopping for ham radios. I probably won’t buy anything, because the only time I use any of it is when I volunteer for the Portland Marathon every year. I guess that’s just my life. More gadgets I don’t use to distract me from any unhappiness I might have.
I was pretty excited to get my Comcast cable internet connection going today, mainly because my life is really that boring. Now I’m trying to think of how I’m going to route the packets in my network so I can have both connections going. Not exciting, but that’s what my life is like.
Time to hit the hay before I stay up researching just how to do this.
