I just saw someone on TV—presumably a native Japanese speaker—talk about, “You know those little things that come out when you’re playing pachinko, what are they called again…?”
To which someone else of course said, “What, you mean balls?”
At least I’m not the only one who totally blanks out on common words.
I managed to wind up on a mailing list called “hates-software”. It’s, well—a rant repository.
Someone just recently posted what I assume was a bit of a misfire. It was an empty message.
Subject: XML
I followed up, “Indeed. ’nuff said.”
To which someone else followed up:
*seconded*
In the same vein:
Subject: SOAP
I know when I’ve been bested. I could write a lengthy rant about SOAP, but it would consist entirely of language that would make Gordon Ramsay blush.
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My bike has rendered itself temporarily un-roadworthy. Specifically, its rear right-turn indicator bulb has burned out. This means that I either get to signal by sticking my arm out (thereby depriving myself of an accelerator), or I get to drive in such a fashion that it’s obvious that I’ll be going right, even in the absence of a right turn signal. This isn’t so hard on intersections with a right turn lane. It’s a bit harder on the expressway.
I think I’ll stop by the bike shop on Saturday. Preferably early enough that there isn’t enough other traffic on the road for me to be a hazard. Knowing my bike, merely changing the turn signal bulb will be an operation that’ll take the highly-trained mechanic a couple of hours.
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I was particularly impressed by the guy in the large truck who was tailgating non-stop all the way down the Yamate Tunnel. He got away from me by roaring up all 720° of the Ohashi double helix at nearly twice the speed limit, passing cars all the way, before abruptly changing lanes at the very end of the spiral to go heading off in the general direction of the Tomei Expressway.
Then merging onto the #3 expressway, I figured I’d merge in front of the car that was going past—then realized that it looked like he hadn’t seen me and wasn’t even looking for cars that might be merging on. So I went in behind him instead. Shortly afterwards I passed the guy, and realized why he hadn’t noticed me (or other merging traffic)—there was a newspaper spread out over the steering wheel. Something to do while driving instead of driving, I guess.
On the way to work this morning, I strapped my iPhone to my bike’s new GPS mount (being as it’s just a generic STUFF mount), and had a go taping my run to work. The video could have been better, but maybe it’ll edit into something worth watching.
I did attempt to record me going up the double helix junction but because of the camera being, uh, not actively optimized for this kind of thing, and it being dark inside the tunnel and all, it just ended up looking kind of trippy. Ah well. Maybe I’ll figure out how to strap a better camera onto the bike somehow.
On the way home, I encountered an impressive accident—some guy had stopped suddenly for some reason or other. This had caused the van behind him to run into him—and the truck tailgating the both of them to pile into the van. Rainy day, no traction, and no sense of safe following distances. (My theory is this: people go faster in the rain because the more time you spend on wet roads, the more chance you have of getting into an accident, so if you spend as little time as possible, you’re safer. Good logic?)
You were riding your bicycle at night, with no lights, wearing black, and on the wrong side of the road. That pretty well makes you forfeit your right to be angry at the guy in the car who turned in front of you: not only was he not expecting you to be there, but he couldn’t even see you in the first place.
Sheeesh.
Remember this?
Well, that finally disintegrated the other day. I’m amazed that it lasted as long as it did, though, to be honest.
So I finally broke down and got something slightly more official-looking.
Although I did have to do a minor amount of bodging to get it to fit properly onto the mirror stalk of the bike. The mount was meant to go on the handlebars, and my bike doesn’t really have mounting-friendly handlebars. So I had to do this:
That blue thing is actually a bit of rubber mat that’s used as padding for an inkan. They make stamps out of wood here, and then they have to have soft rubber surfaces to stamp against. Go figure. But a bit of that wrapped around the mirror stalk made the navi mount fit just perfectly.
Now all I need to do is find a new power supply for it so its batteries don’t keep running down on me.
I wandered out for lunch today, and discovered that spring is Officially In Progress in Tokyo (at last). The first of the sakura blossoms were coming out! Which was nice for cheering up an otherwise grey, miserable and rainy day.
Having a fancy camera on me, I snapped a few pictures:
Here’s a tree at the base of Sakuragaoka in Shibuya.
Here’s the view looking up Sakuragaoka. In a few days it’s going to look downright spectacular.
A closer look at one of the blossoms. (I guess I could have used a bit of flash for this picture. Oh well.)