The Week #163

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  • ⛰️ Friday was mountain day in Japan. We went and saw an evening showing of  Elemental. I highly recommend it. It was perhaps a bit too long for Leo, as towards the end he said he wanted it to hurry up and end...but he sat through all of it.

    I haven't seen a movie at night in a very long time, but I think they're so much better than the day. Mostly because you don't come home from being out all day just to have to cook dinner and wash dishes...

    After the movie we had coffee and a cookie at Starbucks. The weather was perfect outside as well, increasing my enjoyment. Before Leo we used to go to the cafe at night on a regular basis and it was really good to do that again.
  • 📸 I had a good conversation with an old internet buddy (since I was in junior high / high school?), Brad. We were both into j-rock/j-dramas. Our chat got me reminiscing about the old sites and online communities we used to be a part of.

    Ones like lomo.box.sk, bulletin board with news and user blogs, focused on photography with the lomo cameras. For the uninitiated, the lomos are small film cameras with minimal settings and no zoom. Their marketed as an artsy and fun camera. You "shoot from the hip". And for interesting effects you don't use photoshop or some digital filter, you use colored flashes or cross-process your film.

    One of the main contributors to the site was based in Tokyo,  so there always good photos of Shibuya at night. I spent many a night in the suburbs in Texas thinking about how lucky he was to live in Japan and be able to walk outside and have something interesting to shoot.

    Part of me misses photography, not that I was ever good or serious. I should try to carve out some time one evening/early morning to go out and shoot. Here's a couple of photos from the early 2000's I took with lomo and cross-processed. People that have followed me online for a while will have seen these before.
    Yours truly (~18-ish years ago). Yellow color splash and cross-processed.

    Galveston, Texas at night. Cross-processed.
  • 🐘 Leo and I finally be the Divine Beast Vah Ruta, one of the first big quests. I feel a bit embarrassed that I didn't realize I could use regular arrows or Cryonis (the ability to turn water into ice and also break said ice) to destroy the ice cubes he throws at you for well over a month. As such I had been tried using nothing but shock arrows, which are rarer.
  • 🥔 We've got potatoes and onion overflowing in the house, so I made some roasted potatoes with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, and garam masala. Standard flavors / spices (at least for me). I'm happy to report that Leo a) requested to eat them and b) asked that I make them again tomorrow. Yessir 🫡. The highest praise from this picky eater.
  • 🚲 Leo and I rode our bikes together to the grocery store for the first and second time. This was our first time riding bikes together that wasn't in front of the house. The entire time Leo kept repeating "This is so much fun!" (but in Japanese) and indeed it is a lot of fun to ride bikes together. I'm looking forward to when his legs are a bit stronger and he can climb the small hill on the way back from co-op and stronger still so we can go to the local Starbucks. 
  • 🎶 I have two albums of the week this week. First is Black & White by Casey Bean. I really like Play it Cool, which he performed on a recent episode of The Beanpod, a podcast about life in Japan. The other is an album that I've probably recommended on here before... Original Pirate Material by The Streets. This one is recommended because I was in a bit of a funk...and had the lyrics to Who Got the Funk come to my head while walking the dog...and went for a run to get rid of it...lest I become a geezer.
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