Random Picture Post

While going through the pictures I want to post in the next post about our trip to Himeji, I kept finding random unrelated pictures I wanted to put up. So, here are some of them.

My parents send me to some stuff for Christmas, including a jacket that basically works magic and a nice pair of sneakers. Even while unwrapping the presents on Christmas Eve, it didn't really feel Christmas-y. What really reminded me of Christmas as a kid was the pile of discarded wrapping paper.

At right is a train in the 通動快速 mode, which I've seen on all kinds of signs and things, but never actually ridden before. It's nothing really impressive, but I've been wondering whether or not they exist since I got here, and I was really excited to discover that I had finally found one.

My airsoft arsenal has grown considerably in the past month or so, as you can see here. Included in that pile is my $4 cheapo generic airsoft gun (far right), a Tokyo Marui spring-powered H&K USP (middle-right), a Tokyo Marui AEP H&K USP and its associated battery, charger, 30-round magazine, 100-round magazine, and 20mm rail converter, and a quick loader that works for every airsoft magazine I've tried it on as yet.

And Yanavy sketched this out because we got bored at the Italian food place near here. That was Jes's first time meeting that group as a whole, and I think she was bored out of her mind because she ended up on the far end and didn't get any of the massive quantity of in-jokes. Poor kitten...

Santa Hattery

I went to College Res for a Christmas Eve party with what I can only call "Yanavy and her crew". I don't have Yanavy's pictures, but I got these pictures from Jes, and I think I look funny in a Santa hat, so here you go.

On top of that, she got a random guy dressed up as Santa motoring around town on a scooter. The shot's pretty dark, but with enough jerking around, I was able to brighten it up and only make the noise twenty times worse. Anyway, Santa on a scooter.

And no, that's not me on the scooter.

Anyway, Merry Christmas! I hope you ate as many sweets as I did. ... Unless you're trying to avoid gaining ten pounds in one day.

Kind-of Sort-of Picture Dump

Some random pictures that have been taken and come into my possession in the past week or so. These were all taken on Tuesday.

First up is a picture of me because my parents always want me to post more pictures of me. If it were up to me, I wouldn't show up on cameras, but... Alas, physics don't seem to bend to my will. Much.

I... don't know how this one (far left, hugging) came about, but it ended up being one of the better pictures. Yanavy looks like she's not altogether comfortable with the idea of being hugged, but she was sick, so that may be what's going on with her posture there.
No real explanation for the closer picture, but I like the way it looks with her facing the other picture.

The next picture, at right, is Sara (right) and Magi (not-right) putting up with me taking a picture of them in their kimono. They had a tea ceremony test that day, I understand. Anyway, women in kimono.

You can see the flower power (attached to my head) gave me enough ninja power to dodge having my picture taken properly, if not quite enough to actually jump through the wall of Angela's room to make it out of the frame. Too bad, that. I blame the fan.

Once again, I like this picture of Angela, and having it placed so she looks like she's WTF-ing at the picture of me makes for bonus goodness, I think.

The flower looks much better on Yanavy, in case you're wondering. I don't really do red, you know?

And with that, I've filled my quota of pictures-of-myself for the next few months. Feels good to be done with that, at least.

New Sack

I'm not certain what spurred it, exactly, but my dad sent me some cash to by a new backpack. "What's wrong with your normal backpack?" you might ask. The answer is "Nothing... in Ellensburg." My black and grey Pacific Crest backpack has served me well for quite a while and I intend to continue using it to transport my laptop and whatnot.

The primary problem lies in the foam padding on the side of the bag that rests against my back. Because it's a very soft, comfy foam, it conforms to fit my back just right. While fine and dandy in many circumstances, that's less than ideal when 100% humidity is considered to be fairly low. (That's only mostly a joke.) The solution is to get a back that is somewhat separated from your body, utilizing either an external frame or a combination of hard foam pads and an internal frame.

After about six and a half hours spread over two days of looking at bags in a local hiking shop and having already checked prices elsewhere, I ended up picking the Deuter Navajo 35, which is a very simple bag, but it's got twin sets of compression straps, shoulder straps that are adjustable from both ends, pockets on both sides (something my black and grey bag doesn't have, for some unknown reason) that are both big enough to put a one-liter bottle of water in, and it's rated to hold 35L of loot. Now, those are just extra features that are really, really nice. What makes it simple is that it has one main compartment with two places to access it from, and a zipper that allows you to separate the bottom 1/3 of the bag from the rest. That's all. No weird little pockets or anything as yet, though I may look into strapping some on the side or on the daisy chain.

Left: Me, being round.

Right: See the hard foam strips?
They're magical.

Now, this bag uses a flexible internal frame with a layer of medium-soft foam on top of that, with two strips of fairly hard foam that keep the bag about 3/4 of an inch off of your back. When you combine that with the fact that you can distribute load and place the bag much more precisely, it makes this bag much easier to wear. I wore it to school today it was very comfortable.

In this picture of Kilik at right, the bag has two 1.5L bottles of water in the side pockets, two in the bottom pocket with a 1L as well. The main compartment has all of my school stuff in it. You might take notice of the fact that it looks nearly empty, despite having seven liters of water and a stack of books and papers about 6" thick in it.

The bag itself weighs something like 700 grams (1.5 pounds), I think, which puts it in the middle to light range.

Anyway, I like it.

Thanks, dad!

日本の物価

I just bought floss and laundry soap. A two-pound box cost me $2, while 40m of floss cost me $5. That seems strange to me, somehow. Maybe next time I'll just get some twine.

Air Conditioner-ing

The air conditioner in our rooms is pretty cool. It not only is an air conditioner, but a heater as well, and has timer and temperature control settings. You can have it turn on or off after anywhere between 30 minutes and 10 hours, but nobody I know has gotten the temperature control setting to work right.
It has three blower settings, though they don't seem to affect how much it cools off a room, just how many papers it blows off my desk

One of the most convenient features is that the output fan is, instead of built in with the rest of the unit, down on the veranda, pointing across, which means that running your heater/AC makes your clothes dry faster.

やっと、Fireworks!

Go here for the gallery!

Okay, this post a lot more pictures than I have anything to say, because you can only say so much about fireworks. I mean, they're pretty and all, but how many times can you say "I thought this one was particularly pretty" before that's worn out?

Pretty much the same thing goes for yukata: they pretty much all look good, so it's silly to say "Oh, this one was pretty!" Some of them look really good, but I had issues deciding. I was basically running in a zigzag up the street, trying to keep up with the people I was with while taking pictures of people left and right.

Now, since I took about 250 pictures that came out reasonably, and it seems like a shame to just let them sit on my hard drive, I'm going to post all of them up in a gallery once I'm done with this post. But unless you really like fireworks, I wouldn't bother. I've got most of the shots that came out nicely in this post already. Or I will by the time I'm done. So my plan is to just mix in pictures of fireworks completely at random in the text until I run out. As you can see.
On the other hand, there are 17 pictures in this post and 201 pictures up in the gallery, so if you want more, you know where to get 'em.

A surprisingly small number of people actually declined having their picture taken. If I asked about 80 groups of people, I think about four asked that I not take their pictures. One of them had a headache and didn't want to cope with the flash, and the rest were just like "Uh... No, it's better if you don't." My response in each case something along the lines "Oh, okay. Well, I understand. Excuse me..." and I would run off to the next group.

I'm not sure if this is clear or not, but it was very hot. And muggy.
No, no. It was very muggy. And very hot. If you look at me in the picture at right, you will see what I'm talking about. Actually, any of the pictures of me show it, because I was silly and wore an unpatterned shirt.
That said, the next one doesn't show it nearly as much, though, which is nice. All but two of the pictures with me in them were taken by Ana, and a bunch of the fireworks pictures were, as well. Figure the middle 1/4 or so.

Anything where the fireworks are doing things they shouldn't be, like this green one at right, is one I took. I wanted to play around a little so I wouldn't have all of the pictures "Look, uh... a firework. Whee?" Now they don't do that till you've looked over 350 of them three or four times.

While we were watching the fireworks, I kept thinking "Wow, if just one of those big ones, like, fell over or something, we'd have an entire beach full of people covered in light clothing that it would be pointing at. I also kept thinking "So one of those probably costs $100, at least. They just launched three in a burs - Ah, make tat fifty in a burs- Or two hundred. So that's... A lot of cash." and then i would give up and go back to taking pictures.

I would occasionally glance back at the buildings. I mean, as silly as this might sound, it seems like the perfect time to do something untoward to a crowd of people is something where there are bright flashes and everybody's night vision is screwed, and 95% of people are going to be looking towards the bright flashes anyway. With the random explosions and random talking noise, you could set up just about whatever you want anywhere behind the crowd completely unseen.
Maybe that's just too many movies.

Okay, I also got this picture at right. Guess at what I did?
...
...
I got the shutter-opening noise confused with the shutter-shutting noise and moved the camera when it was exposing instead of when it wasn't. Kind of a cool effect, though, isn't it?


I especially liked this shot because it was of a family. It was the only group with kids that I recall seeing there, which is too bad. The kids looked really happy with the whole thing, and the parents seemed to get along well.

Extra link to the gallery, in case you still haven't looked.

Underpants Judo

Today was my last day of judo until school starts up again in the fall. There's just no point in going when it's this hot. I mean, the dojo's pretty nice and has fans, but nobody feels like doing anything, so we all just sit around. And it consumes my entire evening or morning, depending on the day.

Today was so muggy that two of the guys took off their clothes and were jumping around the dojo in their underpants. One guy started taking those off, too, but then his girlfriend hit him and he stopped.

It's pretty muggy here.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The peanut butter is kind of dysfunctional and the bread is too thick and bleached way too hard, but it was decent. A little bit uncanny valley, but in terms of sandwiches.

In other news, my green pants gained a battle scar today. Calligraphy day I, for some reason, wore my only light-colored shirt and my green pants of "How old are those?" that Jes has patched up in at least two different places - which I greatly appreciaite!

I'll see about getting a picture up before I try and get the ink out of them. I'm... not optimistic, but I'll still wear them anyway. The fact that Jes has worked on them makes them very special to me somehow.

Lesson for today: Don't wear your only light-colored clothes on calligraphy day.

Oh, shoes.

I wanted to get some sneakers, so I had one of my (Canadian) friends show me a place to get some cheap shoes yesterday. Unfortunately, I have fairly large feet even in the States. Japanese people have tiny feet.
They don't sell anything over 11 at the two stores I went to. An 11 is wearable, but I am not paying $100 for sneakers, and at that, sneakers that don't fit. I love my 240GTX*, but they're a winter boot, and are not really suited to the summers here in Kyoto, which are very humid and sometimes go above 40C (104F) from what I've heard. My giant desert boots of stomping are surprisingly quiet for sneaking up on people on accident, but I'm apparently scaring people by dressing too militarily.

Br.

Apparently, it starts to get a little chilly once it's around midnight. Or at least, too chilly for sandals and a T-shirt.

Rain Suit

Here’s a picture of the rain suit until I can get someone to take a picture of me wearing it. Without a tripod, I can’t really do self-portraits, so I may invest in one at some point. Anybody got a decent one they want to donate? Carbon-fiber, maybe?

Yes, I’m kidding. Jeez, tough crowd. ね？

1. Yes, those are, in fact, suspenders. Coolest thing: they’re optional. You can take them off by unzipping them. Well, I think that’s cool.

2. They whole thing is rated to withstand… “5,000mm” of rain. I guess 5m is quite a bit of rain? I wanted it mostly so that I don’t have to old an umbrella to ride my bike, and so I can wander around without worshipping the god of umbrellas.
I don’t know why I don’t like them.

3. It’s pretty tough material. I mean, for something whose purpose is to be water-resistant. Figure… Maybe a medium-weight plastic tarp.

4. Yes, it has pockets.

a. Yes, it has enough for me.

i. Yes, that’s weird.

5. Pretty much all the openings have elastic control points that allow you to tighten them as you want.

6. The main closure on the jacket is a zipper, which is covered by a flap that has hook-and-loop towards the waist and buttons up top for better control.

7. There’s a D-ring on the bag for god-only-knows. I bought it from a fishing supply store. You never know with those guys.

If there are any other questions, go ahead and leave them in the comments and I’ll try and check tomorrow or soon. I’m too tired to think time. おやすみ。(Good night [informal])

Edit: It looks like I forgot to actually put the pictures in. The first is the massive bag that I got it in, which is about 50% bigger in every dimension than the basket on my bike. That was fun.
Also, I swear it's green. It's a nice OD green, but here it shows up grey. Go figure.

Raincoat vs. Rain "suit"

So it rains a lot here. Like, a lot a lot. Lot here should be spelled OMGRAIN, but I've left it as-is for clarity.

Anyway.

Because of the OMGRAIN that it rains here, I've been thinking about buying a raincoat. I waterproofed both my jackets and all three of my hats before I left, but that hasn't been enough, as the rain does eventually get through and neglected to waterproof my pants.

Again, no jokes please.

I understand that my options are as follows:

• $1 raincoat from the 百円 shop (dollar store)
• $40 two-piece rain suit consisting of full-length pants and a jacket.
• $70 version of the above, with better seamwork, more pockets, a better-constructed hood, and OMGREEN*. Oh, and it looks much better on me. And, for some reason, zips into a lifejacket, if you want it to.
  
• Hell, they're only $30, and you never know when your apartment might flood due to OMGRAIN rain.
  

Comments would be appreciated here, as I'm in a bit of a quandary at this point.
OMGREEN is a special color. It is defined as "Green enough that I like it, and on something cool".

I'm currently leaning towards the green one, if you can't tell.
Again, comments please!