I visitedt he bike graveyard today in hopes of finding a replacement wheel for my bike so I can use it in May.

More photos.

I recieved this email today.

Dear Sir or Madame:
My name is Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein, the rightful leader of the
Iraqi people. Though we have not met before I hope that reports of your
personal integrity, reliability and respect for the power of money prove
well founded.

As you are probably aware, imperial forces of the United States and their
British lackey's have taken control of certain sections of my country
against the express will of all freedom-loving peoples and the United
Nation. This temporary setback will be remedied in due course, but until
that time I have urgent need of a trusted partner for the transshipment of
certain wholly legal funds totaling US $78,500,000.00 (Seventy-eight
million, five hundred thousand dollars).

I gott get me one of these!

Tomoe and I have decided on a itinerary for the holiday. I went out and splurged on the Touring Mapple 5 -Kansai (Mapple is the king of maps... I was addicted to them a while back and bought a bunch just to look at) Saturday, and have found that there are nice looking mountains and countryside around the west side of Lake Biwa (BTW, my sister used to live near Lake Biwa in Otsu). We'll probably ride from her place in Osaka (click on the link and look for the little red crosshairs) up through Kyoto where we will spend a day or two, then around the west coast of Lake Biwa and up to the coast of the Japan Sea. Wherever we happen to be on Saturday is where we will hop on a train to Nagoya, where her parents live. Gotta get more memory for my camera. If I take as many pictures each day of the trip as I took today in the park, I will need at least 600MB.

I don't know if it is bad news or good news yet, but I have to buy a new bike. No one has parts for my bike anymore. They have to order them, and there is no way to get them in time. Even if they did, I could buy half a new bike with the same money. My bike is still usable as long as I don't go far, and we have been talking about moving offices, which would take me further from the park, so I can take my old bike to work, and use it to ride around short distances at lunch time.

Plus I'm on a spending roll.

You knew what was coming today didn't you? (these are huge thumbnails, you can click on them to make them even bigger) I spent my luch hour taking photos in the park again. The "battery Low" light didn't come on once! I'm in love. It's also easier to take pictures because it actually looks like a camera, and I don't feel like such a weenie walking around with it!

More photos like this

Check out the voyer power on this thing!

A farewell to my old Digital camera. At least some of the last photos turned out OK (if I would take some time to crop them...)

Just playing with my new camera, trying out all the features as I read the instructions. Again, these photos don't look like much compared to some earlier photos I have taken, but I was at least 8 feet from Awii for most of these.

The digital zoom doesn't look that great (image #3), but I guess in some cases it could be better than not using it... it also might do better in sunlight.

#10 turned out great, and check out the detail on my jeans in #11. I also liked #29, #30, and #31 for now. I would have gone outside, but I didn't realize that the battery wasn't charging so long as I had the camera plugged in also, so I was waiting all day for a b

I just spent a hellish day in Shinjuku. In order to keep myself from trying to smuggle a gun into Japan and shoot someone, I'm going to have to find some way to justify the wasted time... there must be something good that came of it.

1. I did get a great new camera even though I had decided against it only two days ago. The battries aren't charged yet, so i can only take photos from my window, but I'm already 50,000 yen happy with it. It has 12x zoom... heh heh heeh ehheeeh ehheh eheeh!

It is only 2 megapixel, but I have never printed a photo yet, so I don't think that matters. What really ticked me off about my old camera was that it had only one zoom setting... "far away". This has 12x natural zoom, and 36x digital zoom... heh heh heeh ehheeeh ehheh eheeh!

Another thing I love about this one, is that I never have to use that dang screen that kills the battries in 30 seconds. In my old camera, in order to change any of the settings (long shutter, timer, erase photo, etc...) I had to turn on the screen, and withing 30 seconds of doing so, I was done unless I had spare battries. This camera has most of the functionality I need on a physical dial or button on the camera (as opposed to on a menu screen) and besides that, the view finder also has the ability to review and erase photos without using the screen. I know this takes more power than having a non-eloctronic view finder, but it is still miles ahead of forcing me to turn on that screen to do anything.

I love it so far. Awii loves chewing on all the new cords and cables that came with it too. Check out these samples. They're nothing special photography wise, but I was just playing. The main point is that the first photo in each set is what my old camera would have taken. To take the rest of the fotos, I would have had to move closer and closer to the subject. To take these, I just sat in my masage chair in my window and zoomed in... 12x heh heh heeh ehheeeh ehheh eheeh!

That is one good thing that came from going to Shinjuku today... but that only took 10 minutes because I had already made up my mind to buy it. After that I wandered around to various bike shops looking for wither an affordable bike to replace mine, or a new rear wheel to replace mine. If the wheel cost more than 15,000 yen I buy a new bike, no questions asked.

Unfortunatly, it was just over 10,000 yen to replace the wheel, but most stores didn't have all the parts in stock. This caused me to spend two hours looking for a shop that did. This in itself is not bad. I learned some good stuff about bikes I didn't know before, and got some good tips about where to meet other sea kayakers, but all that value is ofset by the salesmen who would not give me a straigt answer to my questions.

"I know this part is rare. Do you have this part in stock?" they reply, "Ahhhhh I see what you mean... Well, as a matter of fact... this part is very rare." again, "I know this part is rare. Do you have this part in stock?" they reply. "Ahhhh it is rare. I would have to check our stock..." They don't move. "Do you have this part in stock?" they reply, "Hmmm... if you like, I can check for you." I say, "Yes please do. 1,000 pardons for taking your time." They say, "I expect that we don't have it but I can check." I say, "I expect so too, but please do check." They say, "Hmmmm... I will check." They go talk to someone else, without ever checking their stock (aparently I should have been talking to the other clerk) they return to me ans say "This part is very rare." I say "So you don't have it, right?" They say. "It is rare."

I know that I should be able to pick up wether thay have it or not from their first reply, but I'm too American I guess. and they piss me off more than you can know. It was even worse when I was trying to find out if a certain part that was not exactly what I wanted could be used anyway, or if it was physically impossible. Imageine the same conversation, only instead of me asking "do you have it?" I am saying "I don't care which is best, I only care if it is compatible or not".

In order to save myself from the stress and violent urges that come from going into town, I have attached a price tag on it. From now on, if I need anything, and think that I should go to Shibua or Shinjuku to shop around, I am going to place a "5,000 yen per trip", plus an extra "5,000 yen per hour wasted shopping" price tag on going into town. Looking at it from that perpective, buying the new wheel, (which I didn't buy yet because I couldn't get a straight answer about if it would work or not with my bike) would have cost me 11,000 yen for the parts, 5,000 yen for the trip to Shinjuku, and 15,000 yen for the time spent walking through crowds of slow moving people. that's 31,000 yen! Almost a new bike! I think it's obvious that I would have been much better off buying a new bike at the bike shop down the street...

Oh well, ya live and learn.

Huge fight on the phone last night with Tomoe about what to do for our vacation in two weeks. I'm heading down to Kagawa for the wedding of a friend, and figured to stop by Osaka after (when Tomoe is still working). I'll take my bike and the plan until now had been to hop down to Kyusyu to see my sister and ride in the mountains and visit some great onsens, and end up back in Nagoya at her parents house. (actually the original plan was to go to a friend's wedding in Spain, but Tomoe couldn't get a long enough vacation, nor on the right days to make it)

It's pretty unrealistic though, since Kyusyu is so dang far... and I would like to see a little of where Tomoe is living... (although I have seen Osaka many times and am not impressed... it's just another city).

Since we have more than 2 days off in a row, I would prefer to do something that we never have a chance to do on a weekend. Z.B. take a several day bike trip from A to Z. It was great fun riding from Tokyo to her house in Nagoya two years ago, and it's been a long tiem since we did anything like that.

She is excited to do sight seeing in Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, which is understandable, but the idea of doing a colloection of day trips to see different versions of dirty urban cesspools that can also be done on weekeds doesn't hold much appeal to me.

Next we started thinking about Shikoku (where I used to live in '95) and it was sounding pretty good, since there are nice non-crowded rural areas, yet it's a 4 hour ferry ride from Osaka. But even that seems a little straining on the time if we want to get to Nagoya afterwords (probably a good idea since i have only met her parents once, and they still aren't too thrilled about me)

Anyway, I'm off to the bike shop to either fix my piece-of-crap bike, or buy a new one. I'll make a stop at the map shop to pick up a map of the Kansai area and see if there isn't anyplace nice to take a three day bike trip around there.

Oh yeah... we didn't really figth either... but it's more dramatic to say so.

Two years ago before I had the Bastishnet (which incidently started just over a year ago on April 21), Tomoe and I took a bike ride from Tokyo to Nagoya, following the Tokaido Gojyusantsugi, the same walking path that people used to take from Tokyo to Kansai in the old days of Japan. , It was only four days of riding, and one of those days was pouring rain through the factory fields neaby Fuji, but it was still a lot of fun. Finally the photos make it onto the Bastishnet!

Day 1:

Actually we cheated a bit and took the train out of Tokyo, since there is no need to waste half a day in the city. We started from someplace in Isehara-shi and headed to Hakone, famous for it's onsens (hot baths). A pretty lazy start, but it's ok because the next day we had to ride over Hakone Mountain. The great part was looking at all the people staying in their expensive hotels, when we actually had the best view from our little tent in the riverbed. English info about Hakone here.

Day 2:

Riding over Hakone Mountain. We were out of shape so it was a challenge, and except for a few smaller trails, we had to spend a lot of time on the busy expressway, but we knew once we made it over we had a great downhill ride to look forward to on the other side.

It was a great one hour of downhill cruising on a busy expressway where we actually were faster than the cars, and the little bit of rain and slick roads didn't scare us in the least.

The rain got worse, and the other side of the mountain put us in Fuji factory land (we didn't see Mt Fuji once on the whole trip), where there is really one one road for all trafic with the ocean on the left, and mountains on the right. It added to our sence of adventure to ride against driving rain, especially when it got dark and we found ourselves trapped on a high-way with big (for Japan) trucks and literally NO shoulder on the road. Withuot the rain, that section of road would have been totally boring.

We finally found a way off and found ourselves in a the small villiage of Kanbara about 1 km wide, between the ocean and the mountains. Had we been an hour earlier, we could have taken a rice-bath (where you lie in a big pile of warm rice skins) at the only public bath in town, but as it was, they were nice enough to just let us use their shower... only after I strategically asked "Is there anyplace dry we can set up our tent and stash our bikes which we rode all the way from Tokyo?"

We wound up staying under and overpass, which was perfect!

Day 3:

Woke up under the overpass with soaking wet clothes from yesterday's rain, but today was much nicer, and the boring section of raod was past. I'm a little foggy on the specifics, but I know we stopped in the fishing town of Shimizu for some fish at the huge fish co-op, and sat by the port watching the fishing boats go in and out, listening to one of the captains tell us about hos they catch giant tuna.

Most of the ride that day was through semi-urban areas, but it was possible to find smaller roads to take us away from the trafic, so it was nice. Finally, we found a really nice grave yard to stay in for the night on top of a little hill over looking the small town of .... you know what? I can't even remember, but it was in the tea fields of Shizuoka.

I later sent my parents there when they visited, to take a tram ride up into the tea fields in the mountains.

Day 5:

Probably the best day, as we had some nice hills and minor mountians to roll over. In an attempt to find a less-worn road, we got lost and wandered deeper into the tea fields, where we met an old tea farmer and listened to his stories. After a while his wive drove up in a pick-up truck and offered us some tea. Amazingly, they always have a hot pot of tea with them, no matter where they go!

The camera battries were running low, and we wanted to make it to Nagoya by nightfall, so the photos stopped here. Sorry about that.

We wound up taking a train into Nagoya from somewhere around Araichyo, near lake Hamana. because my knee was making almost impossible for me to walk, let alone ride, and we didn't see any reason to waste hours riding through the urban sprall of Nagoya.

I tell ya... Up until now I have always wondered what is such a big deal about jumping on the "I love Mac (computers) and Windows is evil!" bandwagon. It never made sense to be so moral and passionate about something to silly as software when there are so many issues that are far more detrimental to citizens of the world.

In the programming / web-development world, it is pretty much decided that you have to love mac or you just ain't cool. I've known this since I started working with computers, and never saw any good reasoning behind it... but then I use Windows at home and work... not by choice mind you... at work, when I started everyone else was using Mac so they wanted to add a Windows machine and I just happened to be the guy who needed a computer. At home, Windows happened to be on my computer because it happened to be on the only affordable lap-top that I liked (although I didn't know what I was looking for).

Over the past 2 /12 years, I use Windows 98% of the time, and once in a while use a Mac. Over the same 2 /12 years I have slowly developed an aversion to using those Macs. I'm sure it is simply because I am used to the ease of doing things on my own Windows machine, and if I used Mac as much as I did Windows I would feel the same way about Windows.

But wait... even the Mac users in my office are much more efficient when they use Windows. I constantly hear people swearing and complaining about their computers freezing up, or not being able to open some application when they are using Mac. I watch them fumble around the unintuitive windowing system... But still I am sure that it is not the fault of the computer, but rather that the user is inept.

Yesterday, we had a 6 hour meeting with a client in which four of us revised a simple 15 page document that was due today. We had it perfect.. every word thought out and with reason behind it. The computer we were using (a Mac OS-x) crashed several times during the 6 hours, forcing us to reboot but we had been saving the file after ever minor change so all is well... and the owner of the computer assured us with a sheepish grin that "this always happens". I do remember thinking that this has only happened to me on my computer five times at most in the last 2 1/2 years... but again, it must be because the user is inept.

Today, I had him send me the file so I could make the final 3 adjustments and send the file off in the morning. What's this? I can't open the file? Hmmmm.... must have been corrupted by me evil Microsoft Outlook Express email software... I'll just go ask him to resend it.

Your all smart... I guess you know how this story ended. The file was totally wasted on his own computer... I assume as a result of the consistent crashing. 6 hours of work for 4 people gone. Again I recall how this has never happened to me on my computer... oh wait, no that's not true... once I lost some of my personal email inexplicably on my home computer... but I don't really treat that one with respect, so I'm greatly pleased and amazed that it has only happened once.

What's the point?

Until now, I have always just assumed that the people using the Macs that mess up life in the office are just bad users. After all, how could so many computer geeks love Mac so much if the only reason was that it is cool to do so? I still wonder, though I am ever more biased toward the computer that lets me get my work done with no problems. I guess though the biggest point, is that I am happy that I am not officially a geek. I know that I am not, because to be one seems to mean that I pledge blind allegiance to what would appears to my young, 2 1/2 year-old computer-using-eye to be an inferior product.

The other point... That crap sucks when 6 hours of four people's work due the next day is wiped out by a crappy computer!

The last point... I wish someone would give me a practical reason I can understand for choosing a Mac over Windows... leaving out all the bull crap about Microsoft being evil... Sometimes, to battle more meaningful evil in the world, people need to be more efficient in their work, and I think they probably benefit from a computer that does what you expect when you expect it to.

I was just looking at Jason's site, and commenting on how America is really great at beer and burritos, and i stumbled on the site of Bell's, my favorite brewer. And although I just happened to be wearing a shirt with the logo of their Oberon beer today (a gift from my Brother and Sister-in-law) I can't help but feel longing when I see the logo for Two Hearted Ale, by far one of the finest brews I have ever tasted.

Too bad they don't sell it where I will be going in May. I'm sure they have other micro-brews though, and I'm gonna stock up before I come home!

Why is it that the days when things happen that are worth writing about, I don't have any time left to write? To sum it up, had a 7 hour meeting today to decide strategy to fight with the American home office of our client. It actually is really turning into more of a plan on ho to make the situation better though. I was really worried there for a few weeks when everyone was focusing on blaming and who is at fault than on really tryingto imrpove the situation. I guess it is just a step people have to go through before getting down to the matter at hand.

Anyway, went out to dinner with the client too. Here are the photos of the famous-for-being-cheap-and-dirty resteraunt that we went to (Iseya). For some time now I have been wondering if "class" is something that people grow into... maybe when I am older eating in Iseya will be below me. But tonight I realiezd it isn't related to age. The client (only slightly older than me) suggested that we leave and go someplace nicer after ony 30 minutes in Iseya. Did I mention it is a famous Kichijyouji land-mark?

Oh yeah... I'll be coming to america in the middle of May to help the client in their battle, but only for three days.

Nothing to comment about on the photos today... althoug if I had had the new camera I could have gottn a great shot of some baby ducks swimming around a couple of turtles sunbathing on a rock...

These photos really don't do justice. Every day I go there i think "WOW Today is beautiful!" but then I look at my photos and it's crap. Number 11 and number 12 aint bad though...

I think there are only a few more days left of cherry blossoms. Then I can go back to the lunch hours spent in front of my monitor with an onigiri and cup of coffee. I miss the good old days.

It seems as though most people are blossomed out as the park is as empty today as it usually is all year round. It's funny how viewing the blossoms seems to be seen more as a responsibility than a pleasure. The park is crazy until everyone has done their obligatory hanami, and then it clears out, even though the trees are just as beautiful. The nights in Iinokashira are still happening. Still lots of students out, but that will change too in a week. I have no idea why anyone would rather pay to sit in a resteraunt to drink and eat than sit outside in the park... is it something to do with Japanese people? (I'm not sure if it's related, but the foreigner-to-Japanese seems to be much higher in parks around Tokyo than it is just walking down the streets.)

Someone else braved Iinokashira Park on Sunday so I wouldn't have to.
Check out the three photos at Ore no Buloggu, and you'll see why I wasn't there!

Not much time tonight. I just got back from work, which I had to return to after a bye bye party for a friend going back to France. It's still quite early (12:00) but I have to clean because I have a two-month house guest coming from tomorrow. It's the French guy's fiancee and they have to be out of the apartment tomorrow (the same day he leaves for France). After two monthes her job ends and she will be off to France herself. Kind of a fairy-tail I guess, since both she and her sister swore they would never get married, and now all of a sudden she is moving to France... the dream of many a Japanese girl I'm sure.

Oh yeah.. about her staying with me for two months... Let's just keep this our little secret. No need to tell her fiancee or Tomoe.

Actually, the only reason I know the French guy is because of her, and the only reason I know her is because of her sister who Troy and I spent every night with for 6 months when I first came to Japan (Sakaide City, Kagawa-ken... 1995) We had some great times then. It's hard to believe it was 8 years ago. Anyway, I'll be going to her wedding in the first week of June. Some time in the future I suppose I will go to Kazuyo and Dr. JJ's wedding in France. They offered to make it a double wedding, with me and Tomoe. I'll have to ask her about that...

For now, I better get cleaning. I told her to choose which room she wanted to be cleaned before she came, bathroom, living, or kitchen... she chose bathroom.

Bye the way... those two photos of hunks of meat are raw whale meat. I know, I know... I am evil, but I ate it.

It is so much more beautiful when it rains. Today it was pouring in Iinokashira park. The pictures don't do it justice.

In #5 and #6 you can see all the blossoms that have fallen into the pond... #11 turned out pretty nicely.