• The Week #159

    by
    • Each year at Leo's pre-school (and it seems most pre-schools in Japan) once summer vacation starts, they have one night where the oldest kids get to spend the night. This week included that night. What do they do at school? They gave us a link to an unlisted YouTube video (that I've archived) that shows us exactly what they were up to.

      Each class made their own dinner together. They all peeled carrots, potatoes, and slice onions for curry. The kids started the fire that they cooked over as well. Leo managed to peel part of his fingernail off 😖. Beyond making dinner on a bbq, they also went hunting for bugs in a nearby forest. When the sun went down they had a campfire, sang, and roasted marshmallows. For bath time (not included in the video) all the kids took a dip in this big pool. They looked like they had a great time and I'm happy Leo could participate.
    • Without Leo at the house Yumi and I were able to go out for dinner and coffee like the old days and it was a lot of fun. Most importantly we didn't need to worry about how long we were taking because family was watching Leo...we could just go with the flow. I don't know how long it's been since we've been able to do that, but it's been a long time.
    • This week has been hot. Everyday in Kanto has had a slow of 25 - 26 (79F) and a high of around 37 (99F). Combined with the humidity and the best thing you can do is hide inside the house until the sun goes down.

      Having solar certainly makes it easier for me keep cool without thinking about it...but even with these long summer days, I'm not sure if it's the heat, the angle of the sun, or a combination of both, but my generation is actually lower than it was in April. On these bright sunny days I generate about 16 kWh a day, while there were times before where I was generating 18kWh+. I've noticed too that my panels almost never get up to 2.6kWh like they did during spring, instead topping out 2kWh...
    • Tokyo Gas was representing Tokyo-to in the inner-city baseball tournament. Work offered tickets for everybody, so a bunch of us went to watch some baseball and root for home team. I took Leo with me as well so he could see his first baseball game.

      The game was at Tokyo Dome from 10am and we had to be there by 9:30am. It takes about an hour and a half for us to get there and we left early so we didn't need to rush. Whenever I ride into Tokyo with Leo when it's just the two of us we usually take the green-car. This time we enjoyed breakfast during the trip.

      As for the actual game - it could have been more exciting. The first 9-innings were completely shutout, 0-0. After that they did a *hybrid* sudden-death where the team at bat starts with a player on 1st and 2nd base, so it's easier to score. We ultimately lost in the 11th or 12th inning with JR Shikoku got run.

      When we got back to our station I asked Leo if he had a fun and he simply said "No", which makes sense, shutout baseball isn't very exciting, no matter how many dancing pacchos there are on the dugout.

  • The Week #157

    by
    • I sold my car to Big Motor. Emptying it before I drove it made me realize just how big it was and how that lead to the bad habit of just storing stuff in it that we use "sometimes when we go park".  I was extra cautious when driving it to the dealer for the last time. I really didn't want to get into an accident and then be unable to sell it / sell it for the agreed upon price.

      Actually walking away from it without the keys for the last time I had a bit of mixed emotions. On one hand, it's too big and we never drive it because of that ( 7k km over 3 years), so it's better than someone else who can really appreciate it use it. On the other hand, it helped us keep sane during the pandemic as we could use it to visit larger parks, Saitama, and a friend's house in Atami...I felt a bit sad about just leaving it there...like I was abandoning a family member. The good news is that only lasted about 20 - 30 minutes.
    • Most days for the past month or so, I've been making Leo's bento. Most days we put a Japanese omelette (tamago-yaki) in it. Tamago-yaki are square, so they're usually made in a specialty pans. The one we had, a cheap aluminum non-stick has been starting to stick, which has made making his lunch a little stressful. A non-stick pan starting to stick makes you think, "Where'd that non-stick coating go", and the only logical answer is "into my food and into me". To reduce stress and the amount of questionable coatings I ingest I decided to go back to my roots: cast iron. I've used it 3 times so far and it's great. Long live non-non-stick pans.
    • I bought an issue of Tarzan as the cover caught my eye. I used to buy Japanese books/magazines quite often in my 20's, but recently I rarely do. (Maybe as I had more time to sit down and concentrate uninterrupted then?) . The theme of this issue is "how to lose weight in your 40's". I'm not 40, but it's not too far off. The gist is that more than exercise it's diet that matters more as you get older. In the issue they create profiles for a few different personality types (gourmet man, busy man, go with the flow man) and how they typically think of food/diet/meals and ways to change your habits to make them healthier and match your current place in life. 

      Some of the advice is common sense e.g. No more sneaky midnight Chinese (sorry Derek)  or pick a salad instead fries when you get a burger...and no cheese on said burger (😭). The timing of me finding this magazine lined up perfectly with some other thinking I've been doing recently around food and diet, especially around ultra-processed foods...but that thinking needs to be distilled into a proper blog post.
    • Tanzawa's weight graph feature got a minor upgrade: rather than showing the last 10 points only, it now has a dropdown that lets you select from a few different durations. I posted a small video on the pull request on GitHub if you're curious. Related/unrelated, I'm also down 3kg from my high after coming back from America.
    • We got some blueberries off the blueberry bush! There were alright! I think we're going to have heaps that turn blue in the next week. Our goya plant that I've mostly abandoned in the back has spread out massively and has 3 goya in process and they're starting to become a decent size.
    • Speaking of garden updates, I was excited to see that Casey ( @tbeanpod@famichiki.jp ) followed me and started posting on Mastodon. Really enjoying seeing his photos of Beanpodville without the bird-site. Welcome to the fediverse!

  • The Week #158

    by
    • This week I have a couple of stitches in my face...thankfully hidden by glasses. Let me explain. For the past few months I've been monitoring a small spot on my face about 0.5cm from the location where I had a basal cell removed over a decade ago. The new spot hasn't been getting better on its own and is exhibiting the exact same characteristics as my first basal cell. I've heard horror stories of people going to the dermatologist (or any doctor in Japan, really) and the doctor ignoring what patients are telling them...so I kept putting it off (Though sometimes I wonder if the stories are partially as people are not proficient enough explain the situation?) 

      Either way, I couldn't deny it any longer and went to the dermatologist to get it checked out and...she listened to me , took me seriously, and did a biopsy. I'll have the results in 2 weeks, but I'm fairly confident it is a basal cell. Last time I had surgery to remove it and a plastic surgeon to sew me back up... this time I may go for a chemotherapy cream and see if it clears up before taking another knife the face.
    • Which is to say, I'm really happy that the kids as Leo's school noticed that Leo's not getting super dark like everyone else is, despite them both playing outside. This is because we're ensuring he wears his sunblock everyday and re-apply when we're out for extended periods of time. If there's any takeaway from the first two points this week it's please be sun smart: wear your sunblock and keep covered.
    • I built out support for backfeeding my runs from Strava into Tanzawa. I put this off for a long time because I couldn't decide how I'd make the actual post in the db. Do I make a new "activity" type and try to microformat that and...ugh. That's when I decided to just make them a note/status post, relate the run to it, and have the template look for extra information (photos, run paths etc...).
      Admin view

      The results turned out ok, so far. This will allow me to save time from making blog posts with the same photos I just posted to Strava and then manually tooting about it. There are some limitations. Strava only makes the primary photo available in their API and there doesn't seem to be a way for me to backfeed likes / comments as webmentions.
    • Leo and I took Sophie for a walk after dinner on Sunday, after it started cool down.  I've been looking forward to being able to walk Sophie with Leo for...since he was born. He's got enough endurance where he doesn't walk half a block and get tired / ride my shoulders.  Walks are also great, if not the best, time to talk about life and communicate.

      On this week's walk, forever obsessed with Zelda, we were pretending we were walking through Hyrule. As we're walking past creeks there's those little water blobs that throw rocks at you, which we were able to get with an imaginary bow and arrow. As we come along a straight stretch in the road Leo turns to me and says "Oh shit, rock guys!", and dutifully threw a bomb to take care of them. I look forward to our next walk around Hyrule.

  • The Week #156

    by
    • This is post #156 of The Week, which means it's the 3rd year of posting this series! I'm happy that I haven't missed a week or been off schedule once during these 3 years, though there has been a couple of point where I questioned if I should continue. This series is the one thing that's kept me blogging regularly, I think. Each bullet point in a The Week post doesn't feel like enough to warrant a post, but combined they do. If you're wanting to blog / blog more, I highly recommend starting with this approach. Here's to the next 3 years 🍻.
    • I bought the Nissan Sakura. We picked blue and it's similar enough to our current blue that bystanders passing our house may think we've accidentally put our car in the wash and it shrunk. We won't get it August or early September. That said, I'm really excited to get a smaller, electric, car. If it weren't electric, I don't think we'd be switching. I tooted about it, but negotiations when buying a car is the part of the car buying process I hate the most. Especially when the car isn't having problems selling, because they give less ground. 

      In the end I managed to get ¥75,000 off the top and take part in a campaign that doesn't start until next month. In the campaign you get 4 different things: ¥5,000 in Yokosuka city voucher, a ¥5,000 yen gift from a catalog, ¥20,000 if gift cards, and pair tickets to a "famous amusement park" (probably Disneyland)...so probably around ¥50,000 in value. Unrelated to negotiations there's also ¥550,000 cashback from the government (will take a couple months after receiving the car for them to deposit) and ¥80,000 from Nissan to support installing a car charging port on my house. After selling my car ¥1,800,000 and including all incentives I'm only paying about ¥1,000,000 for the car ($6,959.02 with today's horrible exchange rate).
    • As part of selling my car, I have to prepare a couple of documents for selling / buying my car. Theoretically I can do this now from the big copiers at 7-11, but I wasn't sure if I could get my stamp registration certificate or not, so I went to city hall. Either it's years of experience or city hall digitizing their systems or a combination of both, but it was completely painless. No long lines or anything. I was in and out in probably 10 minutes.
    • I've been noticing more and more EVs on the roads lately, which makes me happy for air quality, noise, and climate reasons. Naturally since I've been looking at Sakuras, I've realized just how popular they've become (over 40k sold in a year). There's also more EV postal vans and postal bikes. The one category of transport I haven't yet seen electrified in Japan is the trucks that visit each combini multiple times a day to deliver fresh goods. I swear you can see the particulates in the air when these things pass. I hadn't seen one until this week when walking to the office and it made me really happy.
      An EV delivery truck

  • The Week #155

    by
    • We went to the Nissan dealer so Yumi (and Leo) could see the car and we could test drive it as a family. The main reason we're even changing cars is so that Yumi can drive and not be dependent on me. She tried the automatic parking in the big box electronics store next to the dealership. Driving around it seems like the right size car for us. We've decided to buy it (in blue) and next week I'll go to negotiate a price.

      We also made a contract to sell our current car and our last day with it will be the 30th. When we were car shopping originally, the Freed, while nice, it always felt a little too big. But we wanted something with sliding doors that didn't look like a shoe and that was the option. There were also talks of being able to take everyone out, but those never really happened. We did use the seating capacity once or two to shuttle my sister-in-law and her family down from Tokyo to the family home during the pandemic...but really we had a 7 seater for 3 people + 1 dog.

      Kei's are definitely easier to drive around these narrow streets. With an EV there isn't this feeling of betraying my beliefs each time I use it – especially in the middle of the ever hotter summers.
    • I joined Leo on his last "Oya-ko Ensoku", or Parent-child field trip of his kindergarten years. This time we went to Tatara-hama beach in Yokosuka.
      Having fun at the beach

      At the beach kids can play in the water, but mostly go hunting in the rocks for crabs, fish, and jellyfish. We captured a jellyfish that fit perfectly into his little bucket, saw some crabs, and even a baby shark. Unfortunately the baby shark got up into the rocks, I guess at high tide, and couldn't get out before the water receded and died.

      After playing at the beach for a couple of hours, everyone ate our bentos on the beach, then we had 30 minutes to pack up and visit the museum next to beach. The museum had a lot of information about the local environment and the fish. And for some reason a section with a lot of Godzillas.
      Godzilla over the years

      On the bus ride back to the kindergarten the bus driver played some Tom & Jerry on  entertainment system in the bus to keep the kids entertained.
    • Our blueberries are starting to turn blue! Not too much longer and I'll have at least a 50 dollars worth of berries from this plant. Yum 😋
      Blueberries turning blue

  • The Week #154

    by
    • The rainy season has arrived in Kanto...which means it's been rainy the majority of the last week and will be rainy the following week(s) as well. I generally like the rainy season as, while it's humid, it's the last days of the year before the summer heat really kicks in.
    • Depending on the severity of the rain, Leo soccer match had the potential to be canceled. We'd find out if it was cancelled by 7am when we'd need to leave by 7:15 to arrive in time.

      It wasn't cancelled and Leo had his first soccer match at Nissan Stadium...in the rain! It was a friendly with a bunch of other Kanagawa pre-schools and football clubs. The uniforms were supposed to arrive by the friday prior, but they didn't, so we received them at the stadium and changed there. Each kid could pick their own number, so we have a couple of duplicates 🤣
      Go number 1!

      The game itself was as you'd expect a game of football with 5 year olds to be, they looked like a swarm of bees chasing after the ball. The important part though is they now know what it means to be on a team and know what it's like to play a game, so they'll be ready for a real game this fall. In the mean time, they train.
    • While we were at the soccer match, my wife was at the Japanese archery grounds, taking the test for her sho-dan. She's been working towards this for 2 years and passing this would allow her to practice by herself, whenever the archery grounds are open. Until now she's always had to practice as part of a group when a teacher is around under their supervision.

      They don't tell you the results directly after the test. First, I reckon they deliberate a bit, but then they tell your teacher and your teacher tells you. Come Monday morning, Yumi comes downstairs crying and my first thought was "oh no, who died..." but they were happy tears! Yumi passed her test and, once she pays her dues, will be able to practice whenever she wants.
    • We started looking at perhaps selling our Honda Freed and getting something smaller / easier to drive on the narrow roads around (most of the roads in our neighborhood are only wide enough for 1 car). Also something that's easier to park/back into the small parking spots. As it is now, I'm the only one that drives our car. I don't like driving it much because...narrow roads aren't fun, but also it burns gas, which literally goes against everything I'm working for at work. It's actively making things worse.

      The main (only) contender is the Sakura, the EV Kei car from Nissan. Kei cars are small 4-seaters perfect for driving in the city. At the upper grade, it also ProPilot, so it will be able to automatically park (head first, back in, and parallel), which will solve the main blocker for my wife driving our current car.

      I went to the dealer to get a quote and with all the bells and whistles it's about 360-man ($25k usd). We can sell our car for between 190 - 200-man (not to the dealer) and there's an EV subsidy for 55-man, so that would bring our cost down to 105-man.
      Nissan Sakura

      While at the dealer, I got to inspect it and do a demo of the automatic-parking and it's pretty great. It's so quiet inside the EV. Since it's electric, too, it will cost us nothing / near-nothing for fuel because of our solar panels...

      I'm sold on moving forward, but now I've got to convince my wife that we should move forward with it...after all, it was her idea!.

  • The Week #153

    by
    • I watched the final episode of Ted Lasso. I'm sad to see it end, but it really tied up the story quite nicely. 
    • Leo went to his first robot school class. Since it was his first proper visit (last time was trial), he got his own set of gears and parts. Parents are asked to stay the first time for a few minutes to put colored labels on various cords and setup the motor. The first task was a to build a (non-moving) robot following instructions from a book (I really like that it's a book and not an iPad). Once they finish the main task, they're free to try and customize it. Some kids have difficulty using their imagination to customize things, but not Leo. He dove right in and impressed the teacher with how quickly he started to customize his robot.
    • While Leo was building robot, I went to the McDonalds nearby for a cup of coffee and some time to work on Tanzawa. I haven't been able to run it locally since I upgraded and I wanted to sort it. There were two issues that prevented Tanzawa from running: 

      1) Python wasn't configured to allow sqlite extensions to load when installing with pyenv
      2) Python was using the system sqlite instead of the brew version (which had Spatialite installed as well)
      3) Python was referencing only non-homebrew directories when trying to load geographic libraries.

      It's running locally and I even made a couple of small PRs, including integrating Sunbottle stats into my homepage. So now if you load the top page and scroll down, you'll a couple of solar stats.
    • I found Slow AF Run Club ( I bookmarked an article about them in the NYTimes earlier in the week). I haven't posted yet, but having a community of runners that aren't fast and aren't focused entirely on speed and getting faster encouraged me to get out and go for a run. Embrace my inner-turtle as it will. It was a slow and fun run.
      Ajisai during my run
    • My 12kg kettlebell arrived and I'm happy to report that I can press it single-handedly above my head with both arms. Despite being left-handed, my right side seems to be stronger. After meetings or when I need a distraction for a minute from work, I've taken to doing a few presses with the smaller bell and some swings with the larger bell. I'm slowly turning programming into an active profession. 

  • The Week #152

    by
    • I tend to avoid clothes shopping as much as possible, but I really needed a new shirt. I must have been cycling the same cheap uniqlo t-shirts for at least 2 or 3 years now. I've always heard good  things about L.L. Bean's clothing. They're an American company who's bread and butter is mail order (since before the internet) and it turns out there's a physical store in Yokohama.

      Shopping at L.L. Bean made me feel a bit like my dad (growing up he'd  wear their shirts), which I'm not sure how that makes me feel. Not because of my dad, but because am I really getting that old? Answer: Yes.

      When I was ready to check out, I walked up to the cashier. She was helping the customer before me and I listened in a bit as she was explaining to the customer "the pants are cut this way because these are from America and American's have big butts".  I think she freaked out a bit she saw me standing there 😆. She:s not wrong, but still funny. In the end, I got myself a new casual button up shirt and a hat to replace my Astro's hat. 
    • Leo played in the fountains in front of the art museum. The mall had organized an event with food trucks, various workshops and some vendors. We had a napoleon style pizza for lunch and then went to Blue Bottle for a coffee. At this location, the walls are all glass and they open them up on nice days, and they were wide open.
    • Leo likes the smell of coffee. I had one sip of coffee left and I offer Leo to smell it. He said it smelled good, so I suggested he try it, thinking he'd refute. He drank his first sip of cooled hot-coffee, and he liked it! Attaboy! I don't expect this to become a regular occurrence, he's still 5.
    • We went to the Mitsubishi Industrial Museum, which showcases a lot of the heavy industrial/science products that Mitsubishi is involved it, including deep-sea research submarines, rockets, and airplanes. There's even a video about how they manufacture and launch their rockets. I finally understand why there's a lot of rocket engineers in Nagoya, that's where they manufacture them. The second floor was dedicated to electricity and they explainers for how wind turbines, solar and such like work. Really well put together and worth the ¥500 entry fee.
      Leo checking out the wind turbine at sea level
    • I finally got around to deactivating my twitter account. As I said in my status, I haven't really checked it in months and I don't miss it. This post by Scott made me question what I was waiting for and so I did it. Ask me a year ago and I don't think I could've imagined getting off Twitter entirely, but I like Mastodon, the pace and  the people I'm following there.
    • Out with Mario and in with Zelda. We've been playing Breath of the wind almost everyday and it's fantastic. What I like about it Zelda, beyond the escape-ism of roaming around Hyrule, is that I actually get to play quite a bit. Leo acts as a second set of eyes for items and baddies. It's a good bonding activity.

  • The Week #151

    by
    • One for last week that I forgot to mention, so I'll mention it this week. Since getting his Lego Mario, he's been into building anything and everything. One of his friends at school attends a robot / programming school twice a month, and Leo went to a trial lesson. He had a blast, so we're signing him up for it. It means that twice a month we'll have an hour and a half kid-free and there's a Komeda Coffee across the street.
    • The G7 came to Hiroshima, Japan. A major point of discussion for them was climate change and electricity. We also lined up some announcements to go along with that including a plan to invest £1.5 billion in renewables  in APAC by 2027. To go along with that, we started an advertising campain in Hiroshima. This photo was taken (by not me) outside the Shinkansen gates. It's really cool to see our ads showing up at major train stations throughout Japan.
      🐙⚡️🚅
    • The Super Mario Bros. movie was released on iTunes, so our pre-order went through and we can now enjoy watching the movie at home. Leo has watched it everyday. He's picking up vocabulary from re-watching it so many times, too. My favorite thing is that he tries to sing along with Bowser's ballad to Peach. Jack Black plays Bowser, so you can imagine what he's trying to sing along with.
    • I bought a second, lighter, 12kg Kettlebell. I don't want to injure myself by going too big too quickly. Alas, this one too will take a couple of weeks to arrive.

  • The Week #150

    by
    • This is the first "The Week" on my new M2 Macbook Air. It's pretty great! The Japanese keyboard is still frustrating sometimes, like all of the keys have moved to the left one position, but I've almost retrained myself. PyCharm launches instantly. The battery lasts forever. The resolution is markedly improved from my retina before display before it. I'm still working on getting Tanzawa up and running locally on it – gdal library paths aren't cooperating.
    • I've been thinking about importing my Tweet archive into my website and what I want that look like. I think it will probably be a separate section of my website, rather than just integrated into my Status posts.

      When migrating data, I realized that my Downloads folder wasn't backed up / migrated over (and thus my Twitter archive).  Logging into Twitter for the first time since November so I could re-request/download my archive and...well there's no need to beat a downed horse, but there's not much there for me any longer. I might delete my account after I archive my tweets on my site, just because why bother?
    • The Kettlebell I ordered a few weeks back came in and it's a lot of fun to swing. I got a 16kg bell, which is the recommended starter weight for males. Swings aren't a problem, but anything with one arm and it's a bit heavy. It will take me a little while to build the core/upper body strength to be able to do exercises like Turkish getsup.
    • On Saturday morning I heard heaps of fire trucks...and then I smelled smoke. Upon going outside to investigate with Leo (still in his pajamas) we saw a large black cloud coming from a house a couple blocks away. Ash started raining down as we were walking back to our house. Thankfully the fire department  got the fire under control quickly.
Previous 8 of 23 Next