• The Week #119

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    • This week was Leo's "play day" (what they call undoukai/field day in pre-school). This year I had to help set things up a bit as a "dad volunteer", but truth be told, we didn't do much, we just help hang the banners that spread across the field.

      When Leo woke up that day he told Mom that he's going to do his best. And when he didn't win, he looked to us and said "I did my best!", with a look of confidence on his face. During the x meter dash he didn't get discouraged and walk halfway through like last year. Instead, he just look ahead and ran. The dance that his class performed was also really good and he nailed it.

      The tug of war was a nail biter as his class was at a natural disadvantage because they ere down a man. Each of the 4 teams got two rounds. His class lost the first round. After a long struggle in the second round, it looked like they were going to loose the second round too, but then they got a second wind and tugged their way to victory and 3rd place over-all.

      Being down a man also affected the relay (oldest class only) because the kid that was out was in the top grade, so another kid in had to run twices. Their teacher picked the kid in soccer club who is really fast and they came out on top!

      Another week and I am privileged to say I'm super proud of Leo and his effort on sports day – even if he didn't win, he did his best and had a positive attitude throughout.
    • James made a release of indieweb-utils v0.3.1. I helped do some code review for it and rearranged the docs a bit. Hats off to James on his hard work on the project!
    • We're releasing a thing at work next week, so I started playing with it a bit as an excuse to fiddle with Rich, a python library for "rich text and beautiful formatting in the terminal", as I've been meaning to for a while.

      I like the library a lot so far. I need to fiddle more so I can figure out how to make it interactive, if it's possible. Like ncurses, but less 90's. So what did I make? I made a little program that, when given a date range will fetch your usage and do some calculations.
      September usage

      This is all in python, so I think it might be fun to integrate into my blog somehow. Maybe a chart of monthly electric usage? Or my daily usage (for the previous day) an arrow indicating if it was up, down, or the same? What do you think?

  • The Week #118

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    • I turned 37 years old. Last week at our friend's house we celebrated two birthdays with a larger cake, so on the actual day-of, we opted for individual slices. I took the day after off (so Leo would be in school until mid-afternoon) and we made a quick trip to Kamakura. Yumi bought me a nice new long sleeve shirt from Patagonia and I bought myself a beanie for winter. I bought some bread next door of Patagonia and it turned out to be legit sourdough, I haven't had that in years. Finally we got lunch at Oxymoron, this great curry place which has huge lines on the weekends, and not so much on a random Thursday.
    • We got an email from our solar installers and they got everything, so we're ready for install on October 17th and 18th. Unfortunately it's past "prime time" for the year in terms of generating electricity, but it should still help us save quite a bit of money as the fuel adjustment costs continue to increase.
    • It looks like this past weekend was the last warm weekend of the year, so we went to the beach to play in the water. Usually it's just me and Leo making unplanned trips by subway-train-monorail, but this time all 3 of us by car. The beach is so much better (as a quasi-local) without the beach houses up.
    • I'm experimenting with putting my phone in monochrome to reduce its desirability. I must say, I think I like it more in monochrome as the entire experience is so much more calm. I can't say for certain if it will be a long-term change, but so far I really like it. 

  • The Week #117

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    • I changed the top page of my site from being a list of posts to being a more "curated" view. With just the latest 3 statuses being shown (and no next button to easily view older ones), they feel less permanent/easier to write. I've still got a few "widgets" I'd like to add to the front page before it's "complete", but that's requisite on getting the data into my site first.
    • Japan announced it's going to opening up to tourist and visa-waver travel again from October 11th, provided you have either 3 shots or a negative post prior to boarding. After 2.5 years closed, I imagine it's going to be quite the cluster at the airport as they re-learn how to deal with actual volume again. I'm also curious how things are going to go when people who are used to mask free life come, en masse, to largely still-masking-at-least-in-the-shops-trains Japan. Clash of the cultures?
    • We had a public holiday on Friday to celebrate the first day of autumn. We met with some longtime friends for lunch at their house, which was a nice change of pace. We hadn't seen this set of friends in about a year. Because we're usually the ones doing the hosting of social events, it's nice not to have to get the house looking presentable just to have it messed up a couple hours later.
    • Leo took a test at swimming. Before he went he told us "I have something important to say" and he took my wife to his room where he said "I'm gonna do my best on the test later". For his test he had to push off from the edge and glide for 3 meters while keeping his head underwater for 5 seconds. He passed with flying colors. What's more is, after the test, he received a special recognition from Y.M.C.A. for embodying their core values: caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility. This wasn't an "everybody gets a medal" situation either, only one person class could receive it. I'm really proud of him.

  • The Week #116

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    • Nanmadol, the biggest typhoon/tropical storm since accurate recordings began made landfall in Japan. It's blowing sustained winds are 108 kilometers per hour (67 mph) and gusts up to 162 kilometers (100 miles) per hour. Nanmadol is actually over Yokohama/Tokyo as I write this. Usually typhoons pass quite quickly, but this storm seems like it's taking its time boating along at around 20kph. I enjoy a good storm less than I did when I was younger, perhaps because I'm responsible for handling any damage might occur.
    • We made reservations to go camping next month at Well Camp Nishi Tanzawa. We'd talked about it before, but neither of us went camping as a kid, so it's a bit daunting to get started. One of our friends from pre-school whose husband camps and is trying to get his family more into camping invited us, so we decided it's now or never. Getting the basics camping for a family is relatively expensive. I'm justifying it in my head in two ways: it's good preparation for disasters and each successive trip is quite affordable. Not to mention it gets us out into the Japanese mountains and countryside which is so beautiful. 
    • I started on a redesign just the main page of my blog (and really for Tanzawa as a whole). Rather than just being a list of full blog posts, I'm going to make it more summary driven. I plan to remove the streams sidebar from the homepage, so I'll have the full horizontal area to use. Right now I'm thinking about a just a small feed at the top with my last 5 "status" posts (truncated and linked to the full post) at the top. 

      Other widgets I want, but I'm undecided where / how they'll look are: 
      • "Last seen at: ...", with a link to my latest checkin post 
      • A 4x4 widget with my recent photos (unsure if this should depend on proper Photo posts or just show the recently uploaded/public photos).
      • A list of recent posts (non-status, things with titles).
      • Maybe some kind of map with recent checkins.
      • Would love to integrate weather or other real-time / stats data.

  • The Week #115

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    • On Sunday I went for my first ride in about a week. This was an easy paced 20km, just exploring a bit. On the cycle routes it's so easy to get into the zone – just you and the machine, cranking faster and faster until...it's you've reached your exit and it's time to slow down.
    • The same day, Leo also decided he wanted to go to Baba's house – back on (a different) bike and cranked out another 15km round-trip. Which is to say, my legs are a bit tired on Monday. Not sore, just tired.
    • Speaking of being tired, Leo's starting to speak a lot more English to me. The first words he says to his mom, who is expecting Japanese first thing, are "I'm Tired". Focusing these past few months speaking as much English as possible seems to be paying off. Or maybe it's the Netflix Teen Taitan's Go! subscription (so, so good).
    • I found this fantastic series on Arte called When Bread Becomes Art. It documents different bakers in different parts of Europe. My favorite episode so far The Power of Fermentation, mostly because of this scene where they're in Denmark where he's teaching a sourdough baking class at this marina and :chef-kiss:, it just seemed so nice. It reminded me of our visit to Gustavsberg (though that's Sweden, not Denmark). Nice cool summer weather, ocean near by, sourdough bread – sign me up.
    • It looks like Japan is finally going to open its borders back up to vaccinated / negative PCR travelers and reinstate  visa waivers. After over 2.5 years of being closed it will be nice – maybe my parents or siblings can visit? I'd love to visit the US, but with flights being about $4,000 round-trip per person, ¥144/USD exchange rate, and all the other costs, it's not happening. Hopefully opening the borders will increase the availability of flights and reduce the prices to realistic levels.
    • We did this fun thing at work during summer where we'd try to get customers to reduce electricity usage during peak demand hours and in exchange they could win some prizes (as an employee, no prizes for me 😀). Since it ended the team made a nice summary page where you can see how much electric you saved and how that translates into CO2 / Trees. I managed to save 3.5kWh or about 2kg of CO2, which is about the same amount of CO2 as 13.5 trees would absorb in a month. Yes, we need systemic change, but it's neat to see the impact you can make by turning up the AC a degree here or there.

  • The Week #114

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    • The variety of places we can eat / order from with Leo is slowly increasing. He's been on a curry kick as of late, which is great as we can get veg into him easily, but we also took this chance to grab some Indian takeaway. He ate up the butter-chicken curry. I was hoping to have him try some of my mixed vegetable curry, but they only heard "mixed" when taking our order and gave me the mixed seafood curry.
    • We had a company BBQ at Kasai Rinkai Park in Tokyo. The park is one stop from Disneyland (which you can see from the top of the Ferris wheel). I took Leo with me to meet my "work friends" and he was super excited. The setup is quite nice – basically if you have a reservation, you just need to show up. They have all of the BBQs, give you the charcoal, fire starters, tongs and food to grill. You just need to start the fire and grill. We let one of the Australians on the team man the barbie – it's in their blood. (yes, there were some huge shrimp included and no, I didn't ask him to "put another shrimp on the barbie", but mostly as I didn't think to do that until just now...next time).
    • I went out for a couple of rides along Sakai-gawa and I'm really enjoying it. It's a bit easier now as it's cooled off a bit from the summer highs. While I enjoy riding along the river (nice scenery, no cars) it does make me wish I could incorporate more longer-ish riding into daily life. The usual way people do that is to commute by bike, but that's not feasible as the office is 50km / 3 hour ride away. I guess what I'm getting at is that it would be nice to have a destination, other than just out and back.

  • The Week #113

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    • I met with a buddy for a couple of brews in Totsuka. A few years ago when we met for drinks in Totsuka we tried to visit Yokohama Brewing, a local beer brewer. But that time it was the day after a public holiday, so they were closed in lieu of being open on the holiday. Sunday wasn't a holiday, so they must be open. 

      Wrong! When we arrived there was a sign on the door, the entire staff was off because they were attending a Yokohama Baystars baseball game. Maybe next time we'll be able to have beers there, 3rd times' a charm and all.
    • After wandering around a bit we found a nice Okinawan restaurant that had some tables out front so we could enjoy the cooler weather with our beer. The old lady running the joint wanted to take our photo for her Instagram story, which we obliged.
    • Leo's started mimicking? role playing? me. Out of nowhere he started saying he needs a desk and a computer in his room. Fine – we have an old IKEA Lack table and that old (now working fine) Macbook Air laying about. He starts typing in the notes app and tells me to close the door because he has to work. Then he tells me to go to my office so we can work together (each in our own office though).

      It got me thinking – in his mind working 90% remotely is completely normal for him. The shock when he realizes that most people, especially in Japan, don't get to do that, is gonna be huge.
    • However, now that Leo is "working" and pre-school is starting up he's started also saying "I'm not going to pre-school, I need to work". He does say he wants to study English while he's workig, so at least there's that. I feel like it's gonna be a long couple of weeks while we get back into the routine after a long summer break.

  • The Week #112

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    • About two months ago I saw that Disney on Ice was going to be in Yokohama. Fresh off our trip to Disneyland, I bought tickets for us as I knew Leo would enjoy it. And naturally right as I did, a fresh wave of covid started its thing. Having been burned the last 2 times I tried to plan anything I was trying to not raise my hopes that, even though the tickets aren't refundable, that I'd actually be able to see it. But in the end, we did and it was a lot of fun.
      Tink and the gang
    • A (Japanese) college friend who I haven't seen in years was going through Kanagawa and dropped by for the day. It was really great to see him and introduce him to Leo. Leo took an immediate liking to him and kept trying his convince my friend that he should stay the night. We went to Lucy's, that American restaurant we went a couple weeks back for dinner. The key-lime pie was on point.
    • As I've (probably?) discussed before, my wife practices Kyudo, or Japanese archery. There's been a recent uptick in people interested because of Tsurune, a manga about Kyudo. And as with many manga, they also get made into movies. We saw Tsurune the movie this weekend, which was released on Friday. I was surprised Leo made it through the entire thing, but that was mostly thanks to sneaking in some potato chips and a little box of milk and timing delivery. The movie itself was beautiful.
    • I had another 4-day weekend because it's the last week of summer vacation and my wife worked on Monday. As it was cooler out we decided to go to the play at the beach early that day. Leo's swimming classes are paying off as he's really starting enjoy swimming and playing in the water.

      Of course as we're at Enoshima, we had to visit the aquarium as well. We couldn't see the dolphin show, but instead Leo and I explored areas of that he usually runs past on his way to see the jelly fish, sharks, and the dolphin show. It wasn't nearly as crowded as I was expecting. Though maybe it's because everyone was sitting at the dolphin show 😬.
    • Looking at this week it occurs to me that I went out a lot. It's been good to have some sense of 2019 in life. How wise this is/has been from a covid standpoint remains to be seen. With Leo starting back at pre-school this week, I am looking forward to getting back into our regular routine and slowing things down a bit.

  • The Week #111

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    • My office area has been a mess, pretty much since we moved to our house. It's still a mess, but less so. Basically the problem is we have some awkward sized things that don't really fit anywhere and there's no proper place to put things...so they ended up getting grouped in an area. What I realized was I had heaps of storage vertically and I wasn't using it. I bought another steel shelving unit from muji (large this time, instead of the extra large) and put it across from my other shelve.

      Now there's a perfect spot to store the bike charger and all the other random stuff that didn't really have a place. It's great.
    • I've taken about a month off from running. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's getting bored with always running the same general area. Maybe it's, despite best efforts, I can't run slow enough to stay in "zone 2". In place, I've started taking out my acoustic bike. It's so much fun to ride. Maybe this will be my thing?
    • I finished reading Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World and I'm glad I stuck with it. The three main take-aways I had from it are: 

      1. You're not going to win over the 5%  of the population that are climate change denialist, so don't waste your energy trying. Instead, focus conversations about climate change with the 95% who either agree / can be convinced / are somewhere along that spectrum. 

      2. For die-hard conservatives, they associate climate change as a liberal political issue and will often automatically disagree with doing anything (we saw this with the recent passage of the IRA). For climate change conversations with such people, focus instead on local issues, which brings it home. e.g. The local river isn't as full as it used to be and this will lead to water shortages -> as a community we've got to be prepared to properly manage -> how can we solve the issue, roughly. Especially important in this is it doesn't matter if you don't agree all the time, but that choices/lifestyles trend in the low-carbon direction.

      3. Using your car doesn't make you a sinner and approaching carbon output from the perspective of sin  is counter-productive. Sticks don't work. I always felt a sense of moral guilt each time I used my gasoline car knowing that I was making the problem worse. I still feel that to a certain extent (especially in summer), but it's not like before. I don't beat myself up over it. Note that this is separate from general disdain for driving and cars generally, but that's been there for as long as I can remember and is separate from climate change.

  • The Week #110

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    • The biggest news this week is the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. This is basically a bit watered-down version of Build Back Better, but without the social benefits. Words can't express how happy I am that the US is finally doing something about climate change. 370 billion USD is a lot of money. This bill was the strongest climate change bill ever in the US. My hope is that it's just the start and we can build upon it more and more.

      It's funny how just 3 weeks ago it felt like all hope was lost in the US...generally...but especially in regards to climate change...and now we have a fighting chance. I think it is worth calling out that it was Democrats who gave us a shot at saving the planet, because every Republican voted no. Worse than no, they removed a $35 price-cap on insulin that would've helped type-1 diabetics stop getting gauged by the pharmaceutical companies. 
    • We watched Lightyear, the movie about the real buzz lightyear – not the toy. I wanted to see it in theaters in English. However our usual theater in Tsujido only had it in Japanese. I'd need to visit Minatomirai/central-Yokohama to watch it in English. That's when I saw it was $20 USD on iTunes on my AppleTV. Even with the horrible exchange rate, that worked out to the cost of just me and Leo going to the movies, so we bought it. It was really good – I quite enjoyed it.
    • I got a battery powered pressure washer and started using it around the house. First on the balcony outside office and the results are great! Once confirming it wouldn't mess up our siding in a non-visible location, I started using it on the north side of the house, which has gotten a bit dirty / green with a field being right there. I need to get a ladder so I can get the second floor as well...
    • We had an issue with leaf-miners green beans in the garden. You can tell because they leave these white lines through the leafs as the eat the inside of them. Rather than get some chemical pesticide I tried using neem oil instead, as it's organic and since I'd rather not digest *icides if I can avoid it. Since spraying the neem, I haven't seen any new leafs with leaf-miners and a week later it's looking fuller and greener than ever.
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