You’d think this was going to be more exciting than it is, but I’m thinking of two odd things that I’m kind of obsessed with right now. One is trying to find the source of the power line noise that makes my ham radio useless. I bought a $150 direction-finding antenna/radio for finding radio interference and even build my own homemade antenna, but I keep needing more and more gadgets to try to pinpoint where the noise is coming from. It’s a lot easier when you can tell the power company the number of the pole and the reasons you’ve narrowed it down to that pole. Next on my list is an ultrasonic detector. Ultrasonic detectors are used to listen for gas leaks or bats, but they’re also good at pinpointing the sound of arcing on power lines. I’ve bought parts and pieces to build my own ultrasonic detector but I still don’t have all the parts yet. I think I may just buy one pre-made and experiment with the bits later.

I also get tricked into customer loyalty programs. If I drink 100 different beers at the Mellow Mushroom, I get a special glass with my name on it and I’m up to 49 or so. I’ve had most of the “good” beers on the list and I may have to start on things like Coors Lite. I’m exaggerating, of course, but it may get to that point if I get closer to 100. I’m also trying to buy 30 coffees at Starbucks this month to get to “gold” status there. The coffee has gotten better lately and is not the awful burnt stuff I remember so it isn’t as painful as you’d think. Starbucks also is supposed to give their employees benefits, which I should wholeheartedly support. But I’m not sure what “gold” status will really get me. It’s another one of those things I’m just going to have to experience for myself. I am the sucker with an American Express Platinum Card, after all, and that started with Green in college, Gold sometime afterwards, and Platinum after I decided it might be good for international travel.

Yes, I am just putting it out there that I’m a sucker.

How does an old guy spend New Year’s Eve? In bed by 11PM. Since this is a blog full of an old guy complaining about his ailments, I can tell you about the cold that seems to leave me tired during the day but unable to sleep at night. At least I got my ‘flu shot this year and I’m not suffering from H1N1 like many people are. Instead it’s random fits of coughing. It’s not as bad as people who really got sick. Most of the time it was more like the hiccups.

But here it is, 2014 and I should have something to show for it, right? Some introspection about the past year and some resolutions for for the new year? Instead I’m just coughing, 10 pounds over where I think I started the year, and spending most of my time just shuffling to and from work. And I’m about to hit the big Five-O. One of my classmates said we should use that as an excuse to go to Hawaii, and why not? I haven’t been there since I was Five.

So, my resolutions. Ask someone out. I know how that’ll end up. Start playing the fiddle again (which I quit when my mom was hospitalized). Lose some weight (which I gained back when I realized the only one who saw all the gains and the actual abdominal definition was my doctor). And, realistically, call my insurance back and figure out what the password to my account is without getting horribly irate at the telephone robot maze that they have. I mean, seriously, when I had the option to talk to “mental health resources” I almost selected that to ask why I was so goddamn incensed that I had to go through all the voice prompts just to find out that the real human operators were gone for the night just twenty minutes before I decided to call?

I should come up with some more interesting and realistic choices. Blogging more often so both of you can read my ramblings. You know who you are. Blogging about technical stuff so when someone else googles for questions they can come up with the answers that took me hours to find (if google even finds my stuff, they just seem like it’s all paid ads just like Facebook). Or maybe I should start gardening or something, just to get the hell out of my room.

Well, I suppose that’s it. I never did find out what the fox says and it’s another year. Happy (arbitrary demarcation of a) New Year and it’s time to start anew.

Did I mention that my bathroom scale broke and I finally bought another one? It appears that I’m up at least five pounds, though my doctor today said I look fine. I suppose he’s the only one who ever sees me with my shirt off, but he also only sees sick people.

I must say that two weeks after getting the Nest working it seems to be working just fine. A little too well, since the thermostat is in a room that we don’t go through that often and it thinks we’re out a lot of the times. You just have to walk around through that room and it figures out you’re not out. I think it’s probably a good thing, really.

I was bragging that I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday but I think I lied. I bought a light bulb, several electrical boxes, and a bore scope. I thought I’d use the bore scope to look around inside the ceiling to put in some smoke alarms, but I got very, very lazy instead. Heck, it took an hour to put in the one where I had access to the crawlspace above it which involved some crawling around in an attic. But now my 2nd floor has two smoke detectors and one combo smoke/carbon monoxide detector. The basement has a carbon monoxide detector now. And I still have to put in two smoke detectors and one smoke/CO detector on the first floor.

On that weekend I also bought an Apple TV. I think I’ve been duped, though. I just watched “The Expendables 2” on it and thought the image was kind of crappy. So I switched to my Chromecast, which was much cheaper and simpler and the picture was much better. Sheesh. I sure hope the iTunes movies look better.

Oh, and the fat guy (me) also didn’t go to the gym today. I feel sore and tired and isn’t that a good reason to take an extra day off? It’s also 32ºF outside which is nothing for most people but butt-cold for an Oregonian. It’s even supposed to be down in the teens this week. If I wanted to live somewhere that cold, I’d move to Canada or Nebraska or something. Yeesh.

I am more tired than I ought to be. I think it’s probably all the time I spent the last two evenings trying to get my furnace back working. The morning after I thought I had everything working I found out that after the gas heat never turned on (it’s supposed to switch from the heat pump to the gas furnace when it gets cold outside). I changed the switchover temperature so the heat pump worked at colder temperatures.

I called the owner of the HVAC company and he told me that he’d have someone come by. The HVAC tech added one wire to make the gas furnace run at two levels. When I got home, the vents were pumping out cold air. I found I could get the gas heat on, but the heat pump would never switch to heat. I talked to the tech and the owner of the HVAC company and they the reversing valve was energized in cooling rather than heat.

So, I called Nest. I was on the phone with Nest for 3½ hours. Turns out they lost a call center and the first-line support was not that great. She tried to make me call back once (no way in hell I was going to wait on hold for another hour to get back to a human) and also told me to have the tech call instead (no way in hell the tech was going to wait on hold for an hour just to talk to someone). When she said to send her a picture and call back I asked to talk to her manager.

Fortunately, instead of the manager she sent me to second-tier support. The second-tier support seemed skeptical for a while but he got the troubleshooting bug and we tried a bunch of things. We found we could get the furnace running without any controller and rewiring the Nest revealed the big problem: the Nest itself was broken and couldn’t switch to heat! It also started thinking it was 15ºF warmer than it really was.

9PM was too late to get a replacement and it was the coldest night of the year so far. Fortunately, the gas heat still worked. Amazon’s return policy is spectacular and Home Depot sells them locally for the exact same price. Today, two days after the ordeal started, I have a working heater again.

I am pooped.

I’be been away from the gym for over two weeks and I was about to go today but I thought I could install a Nest thermostat before I went. How hard could it be? The guy who sold me my furnace said he had one and it wasn’t much of a problem. There’s only three wires going from the furnace to the old Honeywell thermostat that seems to be going on the fritz just four or five years since it was installed.

FIVE HOURS LATER, the thermostat appears to be working fine. After hooking up the three wires, I got an error code from the Nest. I did what it told me to do and called Nest technical support. After about 45 minutes on hold, I took a chance and called the guy who installed my furnace. We both went to the same gear head high school and he told me how to wire my furnace, completely bypassing the control unit that’s bolted to the side of the furnace. Unfortunately that required running some new wiring, and finding multi-wire thermostat cable took a trip to Lowe’s and then a trip to Home Depot before I found it. While both were helpful, my favorite Home Depot even opened a Nest box to see if there were more instructions for me.

I think, finally, the Nest is wired right. It seems to know what kind of furnace I have. It seems to have turned the heat on. I can get to it over the internet.

However, I did miss going to the gym, and I still feel like a big fat lazy pig. Ah well, I suppose that’s not really a stretch.

I said I think I drank too much, and it doesn’t take much to be too much when you’re old and when you’re traveling eastward. It was a very long Thursday. If you looked at the clock in Portland, we got up at 1PM Wednesday and didn’t sleep until Thursday night. I stayed up on the plane watching bad movies (a Japanese crime movie where most of the protagonist criminals die, “A Good Day to Die Hard,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Lone Ranger.”

But we started the day going to Tully’s for a change, to get the morning set there.

I wanted to get something to drink on the way back to the hotel and I found the Hot Ginger Ale they were advertising. It was pretty good.

We got on the Narita Express train for Narita Airport, and that takes about an hour.

We took my mom to our yearly lunch at Fujiya. There was an awful lot of spaghetti hiding on that plate.

My mom and sis cleaned their plates.

And then it was onto the plane where I watched all those movies and had to keep getting up to use the bathroom. Fortunately, I had an aisle seat. And then it was back to Portland where they have the Global Entry kiosks set up  That just meant I didn’t stand in line to go through immigrations but had to stand around a really long time to get my bags.

And back to Portland coffee. They even had refills!

Well I just got back from dinner with my old co-worker Suzuki-san, so let me just say it’s time to post some pictures and edit them later.

Now its two days or so later and I’m actually at home. The intarweb connection at the hotel in Tokyo was so spotty that I couldn’t upload these pictures!

Our last full day in Tokyo, I found a large purchase I’ve wanted to make. But besides that, we met my sister’s friend for lunch and she was HILARIOUS. Most people I know in finance drink a bit more than I do and have bigger adventures. It’s the best when those people have fun stories to tell to go along with those adventures. We went to a matcha restaurant in Kinshicho where I had taco rice.

I honestly don’t remember what my mom had. Avocado maguro maybe?

Of course the matcha desserts were great. My mom was having shiruko with shiratama and I had the frozen matcha and ice cream drink. That giant parfait is what my sister had. You’d think it was warm, but it went from 72ºF to 50ºF in three days on our trip. It’s never been that cold on one of my Japan trips. I actually bought some fleece and a hoodie at Uniqlo but sent it to the airport ahead of us because I didn’t think it would be that cold. I ended up buying a Heattech sweater and a knit cap. That, of course, didn’t stop us from getting these cold desserts.

My sister and her friend went to do some shopping and I was planning to take my mom to Katsushika. But we weren’t as far out as I thought and we went for a quick stroll through Asakusa instead. The big lantern at the kaminarimon wasn’t there, but everything else was. 

We got on the subway to go back and I thought we should make one more sightseeing stop as long as we were out. I was thinking of going to Iidabashi where my mom took classes to be able to work in an orphanage, but I noticed that we could get off the subway, hit the Kanda shrine, and get on the JR Chuo line without much walking. Of course I forgot and took her on the route that had the “men’s stairs”.

Kanda shrine is just a little ways from Akihabara and is quite pretty.

Here’s a painting of an old Tokyo festival that my mom stopped to look at.

On the way from Kanda Shrine to Ochanomizu station is the old Confucian school where the samurai sent their children to study. We didn’t go in, but it was impressive to see nevertheless.

After that I went to buy a watch that was expensive enough that most people would think “you paid what for what now?” But I’ve been talking about it for years and guys usually only have two pieces of jewelry, a watch and a wedding band. No wedding band for me, so you know how it is. In any case, I’ve been looking all over for a Grand Seiko and finally found two OK ones that were discounted 15% at the certain stores, but the one I really wanted was only available at department stores and was full price. Then I went to a Seiko “Master Shop”  and saw something that I hadn’t seen anywhere else and I decided it was either that or nothing, leaning towards the nothing because of the price. But I finally decided to get this watch. I knew I could get the 5% sales tax back, but  if you also became a new point card holder you could get 15% off your purchases. So it went from very ridiculously expensive to just ridiculously expensive.

Then it was off to have dinner with my old co-worker, Suzuki-san. He’s been out of work for a year (he got 3 years pay for a voluntary separation package) and so he’s been living a life of leisure. And by that I mean he’s been doing almost nothing and needs to get out more. But I see him every year and that’s always fun. We went out to an Okinawan restaurant where I think we had fried crocodile. I also drank a bit too much, but it was fun.

I’m not sleeping a lot in Tokyo. It’s much louder here and my hotel room makes weird noises what with the ductless air conditioner (that’s off but making a racket) and the Plasmacluster humidifier going bloop-bloop all night. We went to Paul Basset for breakfast, like we usually do, and had some of the best coffee so far on the trip.

I finally was early enough to get the quiche!

We met my sister’s friend in Shibuya and she took us to this weird sushi store where you order on a touch-screen. 

There should be a video here of the sushi coming down the track but you may have to check back in several days when I have time to fix it.

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Most of the rest of the day was spent wandering around Shinjuku. For dinner we met my sister’s high school classmate Chico and her mom. Dr. Hayasaki (and my dad) passed away several years ago, so unfortunately it couldn’t be a full reunion. The last time we met Mrs. Hayasaki was around the year 2000.

Here’s a series of pictures of what a fancy dinner at the Isetan department store looks like.

 

 

I switched to tea and for some reason I got bottled tea instead of the normal tea everyone else had.

 

Salmon and roe with eggs.

Crab on rice.

 

Yeah, they wouldn’t just give us ONE dessert. 

Finally, some tea with salt to get the sweet taste from overpowering your taste buds.

And there you go!

I think it’s getting close to time to go home. I’m bowing while I’m talking on the phone and when my sister asked me a question I started answering her in Japanese. Yeesh. Or it’s that I stayed up too late watching some Japanese TV show. A lot of them start at 9PM and end at 11:20PM. I’m not sure why, but I wish I had a DVR here. I’m so used to getting up to go to the bathroom whenever I feel like it that this TV live thing is holding me down.

I got up and we had the free breakfast down at the Toyoko Inn lobby which wasn’t that great but it sure wasn’t that bad, either.

We had tickets for the 2PM Shinkansen to Tokyo, so we had time for some more sightseeing. Mondays are a day for a lot of museums to be closed and the only things that were guaranteed to be open were the castle and the Orchid Garden. My mom is a fan of orchids, so my sister suggested the orchid garden. It was a lot smaller than we’d expected. The inside greenhouse was about the size of a basketball court, but the outside greenhouses were tiny.

I broke my rule of not taking plant pictures and I took a picture of these weird plants. They put faces on them because they look like animals.

We weren’t that far from the Osu Kannon Temple so we decided to walk there

The shopping streets on the way were filled with discount shops but as we got closer to the temple the stores got more interesting. “Omurice in a cup” is a lot better than the discount blank DVDs or cheap cosmetics. It didn’t take long to get to the temple, and while impressive it doesn’t take a long time to check it all out.

Right next to the temple is a shop with Japanese dumplings and I think they were better last year. Last year I had to stand in a long line and they were a lot fresher. This year we were there early in the day and there wasn’t anyone else there.

We took a taxi back to the station and I was having a good time talking to the driver and he forgot to start the meter! He told me about the two castles of the area and also that his brother is in San Francisco.

At the station we had another of Nagoya’s famous foods, their chicken! Oyako don all around and I also had some tebasaki chicken wings.

We wandered around the station for a bit longer and got on the train to Tokyo.

We’re in Tokyo now and I have a bunch of errands I may have to run. My sister’s friend has something that she wants from a leather works store. A buddy wants an old jazz CD from a special store. And I’m losing the battle of trying to keep from buying a nice watch. We’ll see what happens.

We left Matsuzaka this morning at a civilized 10:09AM which might’ve been a bit late. We did seem to wait for the train for a while just wandering around the two or three stores in the train station. Here’s a picture of a fat dude with a little metal bull.

We got to Nagoya about 11:30 and dropped off our baggage at the Toyoko Inn. I wanted to take my mom and sister to the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology (or the place with the looms and the cars) but we got there just about lunchtime. There’s really nowhere to eat around the museum but there are two places to eat in the museum. One’s a cafeteria and there other is quite a bit more fancy. Last year when I was here I didn’t choose either but today we picked the the fancy option.

Somehow I picked the more-expensive thing that had more items (fish AND meat) but there seemed to be less of everything.

I even got a dessert assortment.

After we made it through the museum we went to the Noritake Gardens and the museum there. The things they had as their examples of fancy were garish to me, and the things they had in the, “This is Noritake too,” exhibit were a lot more interesting to me. My sister did notice that I really liked the china patterns with blue in them.

That was pretty much the whole day. We went out to dinner to a place suggested by the woman at the front counter of the hotel. It was a food court-like restaurant that had miso tonkatsu as well as unagi that the area is famous for. Once again my mom and my sister got a filet cut while I got a roast, though today it was pork instead of beef.

I got a half-and-half of miso and regular tonkatsu sauce. Now I remember what I thought last year; I’ll get miso tonkatsu when I come to Nagoya but I think I like the regular tonkatsu sauce better.

Now I’m back in my room watching Japanese TV.

Tomorrow it’s off to Tokyo!

Another travel day! We got an early start to meet my sister’s friend in Ise, where we went to see the Ise Grand Shrine. I had the sneaking suspicion that it could be a complete shitshow, at least in the travel department, but it turned out we arrived only a couple of minutes late!

First off, I had a horrible night’s sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with my nose plugged full of boogers. My stomach felt bad too. I’m hoping it’s not old age food allergies because I don’t want to cut anything out of my diet (especially not hamburgers filled with cheese) but I also had weird dreams. I’ve been off my game a little this trip. In fact, during my shower I was thinking about a bug I’d filed with another company that was rejected the day we left. I have some thoughts about that, but why am I thinking about it on my holiday?

We left without too much trouble and got in a taxi for Kintetsu Namba station. I don’t think I’ve been there before. On the way, we did see this car with a basenji sticker. My sister had a basenji and they’re weird dogs. I think this one’s name was Anchovy.

I thought Kintetsu would be like JR, but at Namba it was far underground like the Tokyo subway. It seemed like it was even below the Midosuji subway line. When we finally got to the ticket window, we had five minutes to get to the train I thought we were going to catch. The line took closer to 10-15 minutes. But instead of taking an express train to somewhere in the EBFE and switching to another express train, we just took a local train four stops and got on the second express train. Weird how that works.

On the way we saw some odd statues. I’m not sure that the Venus de Milo is supposed to be 40 feet tall and towering over the Statue of Liberty on the left. There’s also a gold goddess of mercy in the background.

We made it to Isuzugawa station that’s about 30 minutes walking to the traditional old shopping arcade next to the Grand Ise Shrine. My sister and I didn’t want to make my mom walk, so I was counting on taking a taxi. We found coin lockers to stash our baggage and went outside to find ALMOST NOTHING. I thought we were in the middle of nowhere (which we really were) but fortunately, a taxi came within about ten minutes. As we got closer and closer to the shrine, it became quite clear that there was one thing people came to see. And there were lots of people.

Here’s a picture of the Isuzu river from the Uji bridge at the entrance to the shrine.

Another picture from the bridge. That’s my mom in the purple coat with the hat she left at the soba restaurant the other day.

It’s quite a walk in the grounds through majestic trees. Huge old cedars, but I don’t take as many tree pictures as my dad used to. However, here’s an offering of sake from lots of different makers to the Grand Shrine.

We finally made it to the main shrine but you can’t take pictures once you get inside. People were lining up to get to the coveted middle spot to ask the gods for their favor. I figure if the gods are listening to me then I’m in big trouble, so I just went to the side. I’m not religious but I figure there’s no harm in being respectfully superstitious. That’s my sister and my mom.

No more pictures from the Shrine grounds. Here’s a picture from the bridge on the way out, though. 

Here’s a view down the shopping street. Can you see all the Asians? You can see my sister in the middle with her friend Yumi, and towards the right is my mom and Yumi’s friend (whose name escapes me right now) and very soon after this I LOST TRACK OF THEM. Fortunately, I saw my mom soon afterwards and she doesn’t move that fast any more.

In one of the stores we saw Ise beer.

Lunch was a great and way too much food. That’s mine, negi toro. Chopped fatty tuna with green onions and egg on rice. 

My mom and Yumi had seafood soup and maguro on sushi rice. My sister didn’t have the soup but had fried shrimp. Yumi’s friend also had the soup and maguro.

After stumbling out we went wandering around the shopping arcade before we could eat some more. Yes, there’s a dessert that we couldn’t pass up but we were incredibly full. Here’s a kid in his finery for shichi-go-san, which means he gets to visit the shrine when he’s five. Girls do at three and seven.

The main square in the shopping & food area.

Here’s Yumi taking a picture of zenzai (and her friend looking confused about my taking their picture). Zenzai is red bean soup. I ate it all.

We said goodbye to Yumi and Yuriko(?) and went on our way to Matsuzaka. It was the closest place my sister could find a hotel. Tomorrow we’re off to Nagoya for a day. Actually it turns out that we could’ve made this a day trip from Osaka and gotten back by 5pm, making logistics much simpler, but this is more of an adventure.

When I hear, “Matsuzaka,” I usually think of the famous Japanese beef and not the pitcher who the Red Sox brought from Japan for tens of millions of dollars. We went to steakhouse “Noel” for dinner and it was spendy but I was not disappointed. The beef was tasty and crunchy and melted in my mouth all at the same time. I got the “roast” while my mom and sister got the “filet”. I thought the added fat of the “roast” would make it more flavorful, but I had a taste of the “filet” and there’s really no wrong way to go on this.

“Noel” only had three or four tables and probably only seated eleven people on the main floor. They had upper party rooms as well, but I didn’t see those. We snuck in early and were lucky to get a seat because the tables were all reserved. They said we could get in if we could finish in less than an hour and I think we were in and out within half that time.

So there you have it. I’m just taking it easy this evening since we’re in the middle of nowhere and I’m hoping to have good dreams of that steak.

It was a beautiful day in Japan today, about 72ºF. I was expecting this to be a shopping day, but when we left the hotel after doing some laundry my mom asked me, “What are you showing me today?” I thought of a few things but a quick trip to Ikeda City and the Ando Momofuku Instant Ramen museum sounded like fun.

Our first stop, though, was to the coffee roaster I went to last year. It’s in another old-school shopping street.

We could smell the beans roasting as soon as we got into the arcade. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s doing a lot of business and the coffee shop upstairs is no longer fully open. You buy coffee downstairs, and he brings it up to you in paper cups. It’s still the fresh roasted and ground coffee as before, but there’s no real service or ambiance. On the plus side, a cup of coffee that used to be ¥600-800 is now only ¥200!

Our second stop was also close to the station and it’s the shrine to the goddess of weaving. If you looked at my pictures last year, you know that if I was left on my own I’d be visiting and taking pictures of every shrine I could find. This is one I visited last year as well. I figured the goddess of weaving would be something my sister could get behind. She’s not the touristy type, really, she likes shopping a lot more.

Here’s more proof that I got her to a shrine. I think those are stained glass windows on either side of the entrance and quite beautiful as well.

The next stop was the Ando Momofuku Instant Ramen Museum. We took a very quick trip through because it was full of kids! I guess this is the season for field trips. Most of the museum is pretty simple. There’s a re-creation of Ando Momofuku’s shack where he experimented on instant ramen, and then there’s a repetitive but interesting story of how he developed the packs of instant ramen and also Cup Noodle! Then there’s a theatre and you can make your own flavor of Cup Noodle, add it to the pre-made noodles, decorate the cup, and take it home.

If you sign up way in advance, you can even take a class where you make instant noodles from the basic ingredients.

I mean seriously, this dude invented CUP NOODLE! 

We found some lunch at a soba restaurant that we recognized a little too late was the same chain as the place we had dinner last night. It was so nice that we went to Ikeda Castle to wander around.

We got back to Umeda in the early afternoon and I went to last night’s soba restaurant to look for the hat my mom lost (they had it!) and then went to Kinokuniya so my mom could buy more books. Very near Kinokuniya is one of our favorite spots to get Japanese snacks. I’m sure I have tons of pictures of this because we’ve been coming here for years. 

My mom got something different this time. 

By this time it was about 4 and my sister and I went on a shopping trip to get whatever the hell it is she gets when she goes shopping. OK, this time it was fabric, and no the store was not called “asse”. 

There’s a picture of my sister taking a picture of ATELIER to nani IRO, a fabric store.

She spent a bunch of money on fabric, just like she said she wouldn’t.

Dinner was another trip wandering and we decided to go get hamburg steaks. Mine was filled with cheese!

My sister got loco mock and this is just proof that I still take a lot of crappy pictures.

My mom got hamburger and porcini mushrooms cooked in foil. 

It doesn’t seem Japanese, but it is. And it was really tasty, too.