When I listen to Hikawa Kiyoshi I always remember my first trip to Japan in 2006 and my host mom in Toyota who was obbsesed with him. Not a surface in the house without his photo (including the bathroom!).

Checked in at Starbucks Coffee

A Father and son are waiting for a haircut. Dad steps out for a smoke. Son goes for the complimentary coffee and has put 4 packets of sugar and a few creamers in it. He’s going to bouncing off the walls.

Checked in at Komeda's Coffee (コメダ珈琲店). Maru Cheesecake type thing and coffee after some exploring in Totsuka. ☕️

I quit Google search and Chrome a number of years ago and switched to DuckDuckGo and Firefox for privacy concerns. Google maps on the other hand has managed to keep its place in my life. It's pretty good about knowing where things are and makes it easy to find a nearby cup of coffee when I'm in an unfamilair place.

After a poor experience with Apple Maps when it first launched, I've mostly ignored it. But I’ve decided to switch to Apple maps and see how it has improved. As far as the app itself, it's a joy to use. It’s more fluid and feels like an iOS app should.

My main concern is navigation. The last time I used it in the US the routing wasn't great. But I'm in Japan now. I've heard that Apple's routing is better in Japan than Google. Google's routing has a tendecy to route you down super small, maybe not legal to drive on roads.

Google’s default navigation in Japan can pronounce Japanese better, while Siri seems to be pronouncing Japanese like English by default, which makes place names nearly uncomprehenciable.

The jury’s still out if the promotion to my dock willI stick, but so far I'm enjoying the Apple experience a lot more.


Writing in pure English, without mixing in Japanese like I do when I speak, is surprisingly difficult.

Ever since Leo started being obsessed with trains, we always walk along the tracks on the way home from the station. Today not a single train passed and as we got close to the guard rails he started mimicking the noise they make. So we waited with a couple of other kids for the next train to go by. It’s the simple things that make life fun.