On TV tonight there was this show where two engineering teams competed to see who could build a real life Mazinger Z “Rocket Punch”. Kinda like a Japanese version of “Monster Garage”. Mazinger Z fires its fist at enemy giant robots so the test was for the engineering teams to create a fist that could fly a distance and knock down some targets. One team built the fist to be propelled by rockets the other using a jet engine. Which team do you think won?
Month: September, 2004
Rocket Punch!
Venus Line: Day Three
This morning, we decided to visit another local onsen and a nearby museum before heading back to Tokyo. We wanted to get back soon to avoid the traffic.
On the way to the onsen, there was some sort of local festival going on. Seemed like everyone in the neighborhood was out pulling these long logs down the street. Not sure what it meant.
Venus Line: Day One
One of the first driving routes you’ll find in any Kanto driving route guide is the Venus Line route. It’s an 80 km stretch of winding road through the mountains in Nagano. Been a while since I went on a long drive and decided to make the trip while I have some time off work. The Venus Line used to be a toll road but I heard that since last year they made it free to attract more tourists. On a good day, the scenery along the Venus Line is spectacular (well, so I heard) perfect for top down driving. But, being off season and all, the weather this weekend will be crap.
(1) Left early friday morning, the Chuo Expressway was empty so it only took about 3 hrs to get there including a long break at Dangozaka parking area (2) Got ETC installed yesterday and it’s cool! And it’s a good thing too cause my roadster is so low that sometimes I can’t reach the ticket machine (3) The start of Venus Line, not that impressive..
Perl takes a dump in my cgi bin
So I wake up this morning to this alarming e-mail from my webhosting provider saying I exceeded my disk storage space by 335MBs and either need to delete stuff or pay an extra 20 bucks a month. What?? I haven’t even uploaded any files that big in a last days. I write back telling them this and get a reply in less than 5 minutes (The support at prohosting is great, by the way). Apparently, there is this 512 MB perl.core dump file in the cgi-bin. How it got there is a mystery but no doubt there is a bug in the script of the new version of Movabletype (3.11) or something wrong with my config. After converting over to MySQL, I noticed that when I update or create a new directory and save it, the page hangs all the time. I experimented a bit and discovered that the perl.core dump is created everytime I create a new entry! Anyone know how to fix this??
UPDATE: Well, I decided its not worth the effort to keep trying to find a solution to this problem and just revert back to the Berkley DB system. Rebuilding takes more time and there are more html files to deal with on the server but at least the performance is faster..
Finally!
The Star Wars Trilogy DVD is out! How long have we’ve all been waiting for this?
I had the day off today and headed up to Bic Camera to buy the DVD box. It doesn’t go on sale officially until tomorrow but in Japan DVDs usually go on sale a day or so in advance. They had an elaborate stand set up just to sell the box set. No one waiting there to buy it except me. Well, what do you expect on a weekday afternoon? I stand there at the counter waiting for someone to help me. They make me wait 5 minutes for christ sake! I’ve been waiting for 7 years for this DVD, I want it now man! OK relax, breath in, breath out. A girl and a guy are frantically running around trying to find the key to the cash register, after disappearing in a back a few times the girl finally asks me if I came to buy the Star Wars DVD, Duh?! I fork over my 8,970 yen and she hands over the DVDs in a bag, no poster, no mouse pad, nothing. Oh well.
The box is actually pretty flimsy. And the pictures on the individual discs are lame, Mark Hamil looks too old on the Episode IV cover don’t you think? They must have taken this picture last year! No doubt this will be the all time top selling DVD ever, surpassing Spiderman, The Godfather and Karate Kid.
Being a Star Wars Purist, I wish they would release the original version without any of the computer animation. Lucas made some changes to the movies just for the DVD, CNN had an article about it here. According to the article, Hayden Christensen appears at the end of Return of the Jedi as the spirit of Anakin Skywalker (Barf!)
UPDATE: There are some previews of the next Star Wars film on the bonus disc. And the documentary about the making of the Trilogy is fantastic! Lots of footage never released before.
Movable Type and MySQL
As my Blog slowly gets bigger, the rebuild times get longer and longer. This evening I converted the site over to MySQL. The archives are now dynamic although you wouldn’t know it since the file endings are still HTML. Not sure how this is done exactly but I tested it out by deleting all the archived files off the server. Now I can edit the Archive templates and don’t even need to rebuild them. After saving, the changes are immediately reflected on the site. Neat!
More Lame Diet Products
This trend of putting the word “DIET” on just about any kind of product is getting out of hand. I saw some ridiculous items in Sony Plaza today.
(Left) The “SU-HA” whistle thingy has been around for a while, breath heavily into it 30 times a day to firm up your abs. (Right) Mouth Fitness, bite on the rubber mouth piece to thin your face.
(Left) Grapefruit flavor facial oil blotters, lose weight by wiping your face. (Right) Diet enhancing bath powder. Actually, I bought these to try out. Forgive me! I couldn’t get a picture of the diet stockings. There were a few types with labels showing how many calories you can burn per hour wearing them..
Caramel
Japan has some nice caramel candies. These ones from Hokkaido are Corn, Milk and Melon flavors. Yum!
Fashionably Tasty Aojiru
Fancl has made Aojiru (pronounced “A-O-JI-RU”) fashionable for young ladies by packaging it with a cute shaker. Aojiru is a Japanese health drink made of grass. People generally dislike Aojiru because it taste like grass. The characters on the package are two polar bears who have green beards because of drinking Aojiru (Kawaii!)
Of Course I bought some! The display (left), Package (right)
Eunos Roadster Toys
I’ve never seen any NB Mazda Roadster toys, only NA Eunos Roadster. At Bic Camera, I found this Tamiya 1/24 Scale Eunos Roadster and Choro-Q. Is the Mazda Roadster just not popular enough??
Gary’s book
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Sparks of Neon By Gerrit Striker Some of you will remember Gary who was an instructor at IMA years ago. I received an email from him this morning and was glad to hear that he was doing well and had moved back to the US. He wrote a book about Nightlife in Tokyo and Kabukicho. I haven’t read it yet but looking forward to it. His pen name is “Gerrit Striker”. If you have a chance please send him an e-mail. |
Venus Line: Day Two
Well, the weather was a bit better this morning, I could see the clouds up near the mountains gathering. We decided to make the trip to Utsukushi-ga-hara Open Air Museum anyway.
(1) Blue Skies but not for long (2) Half-way to the museum and its already cloudy, it’s early so there was no one at this observation area (nothing to see either) (3) But they did sell some homemade butter.
ETC
Well, finally got around to getting ETC (Not Et Cetera, ETC=Electronic Toll Collection System) installed in my car. I’ve had the ETC card for a while and decided today to get it done. Went to Autobacs and bought the cheapest one:Denso DIU-3500 at 13,800JPY plus 5,000JPY for installation and 3,150JPY for registration. I didn’t need anything fancy, just something that works. A nice female voice tells you if your card is not inserted properly, the toll fare etc. Gonna try it out tomorrow!
(Left) The only space I had was on the side under the dash, that’s the VSD heads up display control below the ETC (Right) The antenna is an ugly piece of plastic.
Reiki Attunement
This afternoon I took my first step to becoming a Reiki Practitioner. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now. Reiki is a hand healing technique which channels the natural energies of people and the universe to help you get “in tune” with your natural vibration. I won’t get into detail about what Reiki is since there are ample resources on the web about it. Let me just say that there are misconceptions about it being a religion or pseudo science. It’s neither of these things. Rather, its more of a relaxation and healing technique.
Playstation 2.2
Sony’s going to release a new Playstation 2 in November. Looks like they are trying to milk the market as much as possible until they can put out PS3. Anyway, this one is about 1/4 the width of the original. Nice! If the price is right (less than 10,000) I might just buy it.
Sumo
Today was Senior Citizen’s day, I decided to go and watch Sumo. We got there just before 4pm in time to catch the beginning of the “Maku no Uchi”. The balcony seats were only half full so we moved to seats with a better view. About 1 in 3 people in the “cheap” seats were foreigners. The others were mostly Japanese senior citizens. Seems like Sumo is only popular with Old people and Gaijin.
(1) Kokugikan in Ryogoku. (2) Sweeping the “Dohyou” during the break. (3) The Sumotori line up and step onto the ring. (4) Each one is introduced as they form a ring. The crowd cries out the names of their favorite Sumo wrestler.
(Left) Asashoryu faces off with his opponent (don’t remember who). (Right) Asashoryu flips the other guys out of the dohyou to win the final match.
New Design
I get sick of things pretty quickly and so I decided to do something about the layout and design of this site. Also, upgraded Movable Type to version 3.11. Thought I would seriously screw things up but it was fairly straight forward and there were not any problems. Some new features but the stylesheet and interface of version 2.661 is better.
Marunouchi OAZO
Yet another new building opens in Tokyo drawing throngs of salarymen and office ladies. Just like Roppongi Hills, Shiodome, Maru Building, this one called “OAZO” is just another nice building with a few restaurants and shops. Don’t get me wrong, its a fine piece of architecture but there’s something dull and generic about these new glass office building/shopping centers which I think will turn Tokyo into just another big boring city. I did enjoy seeing all the beautiful Otemachi office ladies though.
OAZO Official Site
Tokyo Metro Posters
These posters promoting the Tokyo Metro are an example of the type of humor I’m fond of in Japanese Advertising. It would not be funny if I explained this so I won’t bother. Most people living in Tokyo would understand.
Dancing Mazinger
I saw this screensaver playing on a PC in a store today. It has Mazinger Z and Spiderman doing a groove with some other characters that I don’t know. Too Cool! Where can I get this software?!
Love Jet
Wacky Japanese inventor Dr. Nakamatsu, who invented the digital watch and floppy disc, has a fairly new product called “Love Jet” (also called Viagra Spray). Supposed to really heighten sexual stimulation and cure impotency. Not that I need it or anything, just thought it was interesting..I’m wondering, where and when do you spray this?
Dr. Nakamatsu’s Online Shop
ググる
There’s a new verb catching on in Japanese that I’ve heard some people use lately. It’s “ググる” or “guguru” which means to “search something on Google”. Not sure, but I think this book kinda started it.
The word “Google” when translated into syllabic equivalents sounds alot like a common verb in Japanese so it’s natural that people would start to use the word in this way..
Conjugations:
「ググる」 - present tense (guguru)
「ググっている」 - progressive (gugutteiru)
「ググった」 - past tense (gugutta)
「ググれ」 - imperative (gurure)
「ググります」 - present tense honorific (gugurimasu)
「ググっています」- progressive honorific (gugutteimasu)
