I finally got my mom to go to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. It’s on the 8th floor of a municipal building and the first thing you do is take a 2-story escalator to see an upper view of an old Meiji Era section of the town. Then you go down into the town and wander about. After that there are dioramas on the 8th floor. Unfortunately, today was also the day for several grade schools to make their trip to the museum and it ended up being a loud mess.

Afterwards we went walking down the longest shopping arcade in Japan at Tenjinbashi, but it’s all very old-school, so we bailed and headed towards Shinsaibashi.

We had lunch and did NOT get the giant parfait.

My mom and my sister headed towards Daimaru, and I went on a trek to the National Bunraku Theatre to get my mom her favorite calendar.

When I finally got to Daimaru, I checked out the “watch fair”. Turns out they didn’t have any of the Grand Seikos in the area of the fanciest watches because, well, the most expensive Grand Seiko I saw was only EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Sheesh.

My sister and I did have a very nice cup of coffee while waiting for my mom to get a massage.

Eventually we all had massages at Daimaru and afterwards my feet hurt like crazy. I had “reflexology” done (feet and calves) and the tiny woman was incredibly strong.

I had to check out the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi. I’ve been by it a bunch of times but never went in. It’s just like an American Apple Store, except more expensive and not nearly as crowded.

We finally got back to the hotel and they switched my room when I complained about my incredibly creaky bed. Apparently a lot of the mattresses are creaky, but I got a new room on another floor that seems a lot cleaner and smells a lot better. I think I win this one.

Oh, and here’s a picture from last night. I’m not sure if you can see it, but this is when I was waiting at the wrong part of the platform for my train (it was further down towards the right). The guy’s jacket says, “bitch,” and i shows a guy shooting a woman in the head. No idea what the hell that means.

Right now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Osaka, doing what I’d do at home. Playing with my computer. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but it’s kind of nice being in a hotel room and no someone else’s house. Not that I don’t just sit at our friends’ house in Toyama playing on the computer (which I did). I even found a bug in the Vim configure.in while I was there.

This was our travel day to Osaka, and I think my mom is taking it easy with my sister in their room which is right next door. I’m sure I’m overdoing the free intarweb access here because I just downloaded a 2+GB compiler onto my Mac. Not that I needed it right away, but like I said, we’re taking it easy right now. My mom isn’t that young any more and we don’t want to torture her too much.

We left Toyama station, where they’re going to have the new Hokuriku Shinkansen come through and that’s the construction in the background. On the complete opposite end of Japanese train lines is the one-car diesel car which I think heads up to Mt. Tateyama.

Ugh, I have lens flare!

I told my sister to get some of the coffee out of the vending machine but she didn’t like it at all. I thought it was fine. We made jokes about the name of the coffee. By the way, we stopped at Tsuruga today, which is the the terminus of the ??? (the Obama line). 

Here’s our train!

I like not having to belt up like on a plane, and it’s a whole lot quieter as well. My only complaint is that it’s harder to use the men’s bathroom, as the train rocks a bit. Other than that, I’d much rather take the train.

I had to have one random shot out the window.

One not so random, of a giant Kannon-san (goddess of mercy).

And of course a picture of the Suntory distillery as we sped by. 

I’m still sitting in the hotel now, but I have to leave to meet my old co-worker tonight.

We’re still in Toyama, and really this isn’t about me or my sister but my mom hanging around with her friends. We went to a sushi restaurant for lunch, for example, and my sister couldn’t find much to eat. She did have a green tea soft ice cream for dessert.

The shopping center has restaurants and a grocery store and used to have a Beard Papa. The B&R is still there as well as the Mr. Donut.

Tomorrow we’re on the road for Osaka. I’m meeting an old friend from work at 8PM. I’ve been going to bed pretty early this trip (I usually stay up) so 8 sounds late. It isn’t, of course. I’m old but not that old.

Not much more to add today. Still in Toyama, and we went to an Indian restaurant for lunch. I think I bought a couple pairs of pants at Uniqlo, but we’re just taking it easy in Toyama.

Not much happens when we’re in Toyama, and that’s still better than being at work. So today we went to a small, local coffee roaster for coffee and spent not too much money at Uniqlo (the Japanese equivalent of the Gap). It’s hard to spend much money at Uniqlo, because everything there is very inexpensive.

But really, that’s about it.

Today we finally made it to Toyama. We started off with a breakfast at the onset and it was as impressive as dinner.

The picture doesn’t show the rice or miso soup. Unfortunately, that also meant we overdid it a bit. My digestive system wasn’t feeling that great, and my mom wasn’t feeling good either. My sister and I think we were also feeling the effects of the lack of coffee in the morning and passed out on the drive to Toyama. Every time I was awake, it seemed like we were going straight downhill.

We had a lunch of Mos Burger in Toyama, and we went shopping at Uniqlo. That might be the only stop at Mos Burger for this trip, but it certainly isn’t the only stop at Uniqlo.

Today we started off on the way from Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture to Toyama in Toyama Prefecture. It’s an easy day trip but we’re stopping off at Shirahone Onsen on the way.

We went through Matsumoto on the way and here’s a picture of the highway parking area with the Japan Alps in the background. The highway speed limit is only 80 kph (about 50 mph) but it’s also a toll road which means lots less traffic than you’d think.

Matsumoto appears to be a wealthy town of which I know very little. It is a castle town and the castle has been standing since the start and didn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up like a lot of other castles.

The inside of Japanese castles is quite similar. Lots of incredibly steep stairs to keep your enemy from rushing up to kill the head honcho. You usually get a great view from the top, but I sure wouldn’t want to be THMFIC because it is a long ways up. This is also the season for chrysanthemum contests and you can see the tent at the very left where that was happening. 

We made the trip into the hills to Shirahone Onsen. Shirahone means white bone, and the water of the springs appear to be full of calcium and sulphur by the smell. You can see the bluish color of the water in the tub, which was part of our room! There were also communal bathing facilities on a lower floor.

Everyone but my sister tried the tub in the room. We all went to the big baths downstairs later, though.

Just like most place like this, the dinner was fancy and there was way too much to eat.

I thought this was quite a lot, but this was just the appetizers.

Some very tasty sashimi (including salmon) was brought out.

 The teapot held something special. 

Matsutake and ground chicken meatballs.

 After that there was soba and they lit the heat underneath the wrapped tray. 

It was steak on miso and some vegetables to grill.

After that, we had a grilled fish that I destroyed before taking a picture.

Some onsen croquettes.

At this point I think I was in a food coma and don’t know what I was getting (but I do remember it was good).

And then, about the time we were thinking “please stop”, we got a seafood gratin baked in an apple with some gingko nuts.

 And then, to finish us off, miso soup and rice. We asked for very little rice.

We still had matcha cake for dessert!

After that was when we waddled our way to the “public” bath. There were two baths at the Shirahone Shintaku Onsen, one for women and one for men, and both had an inside bath and and an outside bath. You did all your washing inside, warmed up in the big bath, and then walked down a long, cold wooden path to the outside bath. Unfortunately, the men’s outside bath wasn’t all that warm.

And there you go for day 3!

I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping but what would you expect after the 9 hour time change? Heck, I even have troubles when daylight savings time starts.

We went on a trip to somewhere in the middle of nowhere yesterday, and by the middle of nowhere I mean Costco. Actually, we also went to the mountains to see the scenery.

It’s quite a ways up there, and more a mountain range than just “a” mountain so there’s no one mountain. We even went up to the top of a cable car ride to see more.

Of course, at the top you could walk up even further to get to a shrine. The shrine and the view were not worth the extra walk, nor were they worth more pictures.

Here’s the view from the top of the cable car ride. Here I present a view of Mt. Fuji the haze from China.

You can kind of see the edge of the lake from the view up top (it’s at the right edge) and here’s a better picture. That’s my mom and sister at the left.

Another view from the trip was the stairs at somewhere I forgot the name of. These are famous stairs, as I’ve seen them on Japanese TV. There’s really no end to these stairs (I exaggerate, they’re just very, very long.) We went twice as far as you can see in this picture and we weren’t a quarter of the way up the stairs. I think the top of the stairs leads to another path to another shrine. Very Japanese of them. This picture needs some enhancing too, but that’ll have to wait for later.

I’m not sure how they decide what sort of restaurants are on these mountains. Two years ago we went up a mountain that just had soba noodles. This mountain was all udon noodles. We had way too much udon for lunch.

Oh, and here’s a giant moth for you from the parking lot.

We got back to town in mid-afternoon and my mom and sister had never been to a Japanese Costco. I have no idea why they sell some of the things they do. A lot of things are just like what they have in the US, like those giant pizzas that won’t fit in a normal refrigerator or a normal oven. I don’t remember seeing a Japanese oven, so I’m not sure why they’d have that for sale. Why not get the cooked pizza?

You’re not going to find another giant drink for ¥60, or another giant hot dog for ¥180 in Japan.

I also don’t think I’ve ever seen 48 pieces of sushi for ¥3000 in any country.

My sister isn’t huge, but this bag of potato chips sure is. They also had those giant bags of tortilla chips they sell in the US and I saw this white dude with two bags of them.

I’m not sure who is going to eat this much bread.

Afterwards my sister and I went to the cheap eyeglass store and I got computer-tinted glasses for about ¥12,000. ($120) My sister’s were ¥7990. It took them 15 minutes to cut the lenses for both sets.

Dinner was at a yakiniku place and then I fell asleep watching a baseball game. While the World Series of Baseball is over, the Japan Series of Baseball continues with The Sendai’s Rakuten and The Tokyo Giants.

Not much to report. Get off the plane. Rent SIM cards for phone use in Japan. Get on a bus for a friend’s place. Fall asleep. That’s about it.

 

HEY MEGAN, THIS IS AT THE AIRPORT. DID YOU NEED ANYTHING FROM JAPAN? 🙂

I can’t even keep up a once-a-week pace on this thing. I have ways of pissing away my evenings and that’s even after I gave up Facebook for the most part. Keeping up with all my RSS feeds and twitter pretty much kills all the time I have left. That’s even after avoiding the gym more than normal since I was feeling poorly the past few weeks. Or, as my brother-in-law says, I had the punes.

I think most people were expecting Apple to announce new iPads and maybe an Apple TV today. Well, the announcements were more like what you’d expect at WWDC. New OS X Mavericks. New laptops. A ship date for the new Mac Pro. New iLife. And finally, new iPads.

I seem to buy a lot of new laptops, like one a year. I think if I can sell the one I have now, I’ll get a new one. It’s a silly thing to be doing year after year, but it’s what I do. And for all the time I spend in front of the darn thing, it’s probably not a bad purchase. If nothing else, this is what I meant when I said I had something new to lust after.

Oh, and I spent a lot of time this weekend trying to figure out something on my radio. I finally have confirmation that I’ve talked to all 50 states (something that’s supposed to be easy to do, but has taken me since 1978 to accomplish) and I’m pretty happy about that. I should probably spend some more time fiddling with the radio since I have spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars on equipment and antennas. Plus, I actually enjoy it. Yeah, that means I’m a super-nerd. Most people have nothing on a guy that has to put up antennas for his hobby. ARE YOU LISTENING LADIES?

September is the best month, statistically, in Oregon but this year it’s been a bit dreary. And I welcome the dreariness. You might wonder why I’m waiting for the end of summer when the next thing is nine months of rain, but I’m an Oregonian and the heat and I don’t get along. That’s only the partial truth and most of my complaints are about the m*th*rf*ck*ng birds going into the m*th*rf*ck*ng chimney at the school across the street. The birds poop all over my car and … wait, I no longer have a fancy car. Poop on my Prius isn’t so bad. The truth is, 4000 birds attract 20000 people (not on the same day) and that gets to be a huge pain in the ass.

It’s actually not that bad if I leave for the gym while they’re all here and get back after they leave, but who wants to plan everything around a bunch of people hanging around the neighborhood?

Today was National Cheeseburger Day! $1 burgers at Ringside! Two for one Tillamook Cheeseburgers at Burgerville! What did I have for lunch? A teriyaki chicken sandwich. And for dinner? Natto (the fermented beans that smell like a mop bucket and are slimy and gross but taste pretty good). I figured it was amateur hour and skipped it just like I skipped burger week. In fact, I was at Pause during burger week and I had a pork chop instead of their $5 burger special! That showed ‘em. (Whoever ‘em is.)

This is sad ham radio geek news but Wayne Green (who started a bunch of magazines I read as a teenager) just passed away at 91. Yeah, I’m not talking about pr0n, but totally geeky stuff like 73, Byte, Kilobaud, and other very nerdy magazines. I saw him once at the ARRL National Convention in Seattle in 1980. In fact, when I was at the VICA National Skill Olympics in 1981, my buddy Roger and I had code words set up so I could make a collect call to tell him if I won or not. The code word for #1 (which I actually pulled off!) was “Wayne Green”. It’s been a long time since I thought about Wayne, and he’d gotten a bit wacky, but he will be missed.

I just had drinks with my buddy Il and his wife Anna. I got a last-minute text from them and I figured that the new parents probably had a grandparent give them a date night out. They wanted to have a quick drink and so I went to hung out for a while. Three drinks cost me more than dinner, but it was worth it, of course. They still seem more excited than overwhelmed and that’s a good way to be.

The only other excitement today was that I got to use my new lawnmower on my new lawn, and that my mom and I got ‘flu shots. Only trivalent and not quadravalent, but you get what you can get.