Rich and Strange Aeons

Was out on a walk, not particularly interesting, just getting out. I started counting traffic.

• On a very boring two-way street some distance from the station, with little of pedestrian interest: 7 bicycles, 4 mopeds/motorbikes, 33 cars (and a bus or two). I did not formally count pedestrians, as there hardly were any at first, but it ended up feeling comparable to bicycles. Then I hit a street where there seemed to be a phase transition in traffic.

• Same street, but now closer to the station: 25 pedestrians, 12 2-wheel vehicles of all types, 17 cars/buses/trucks.

• 3-way scramble intersection, very close to the station: 26 pedestrians to 9 cars; 28 pedestrians to 9 cars. (Two different light cycles.) Going the other direction, more casual count, but maybe 18 to 14. I note that much more signal time is given to moving the 9-14 cars than the 18-26+ pedestrians (plus non-counted sidewalking bicycles.)

Some internal counter tipped over to the point of trying McDonald's here. The menu is fairly different; no obvious equivalent to quarter-pounders; different flavors like teriyaki burger or shrimp burger. I tried a potato beef burger ("big beef" patty, potato patty) and shaka chicki (fried chicken fillet, and from the wrapping you're supposed to shake seasoning over it? But I didn't have any.) There was a messup and I was handed a simple bag of fries, which I discovered only at home. Went back (stole one fry; it smelled better than it tasted) to say "chigau!" and be glad I'd kept the receipt. Got my actual bag. It was... okay.

I note that if you're hungry Now, hot fast food from McDonald's or conbini has the advantage of coming in paper wraps. If you get nice cold snacks from conbini or supermarkets, it comes in a plastic tray. Given the total lack of public trash cans, the paper wraps are rather easier to stick into a pocket of your backpack. (Some conbini have trash cans, so you could eat there and throw it out -- but many don't!)

Dunno if I'm over flu yet; since my supply of tests that can actually detect my levels ia apparently irreplacable, I'm conserving them. Feel good.

Got out, took train to Enoshima station, thinking of walking around. But there's a monorail I'd found on the map, and its station was right there -- on the 5th floor, not 2nd or 3rd like usual. I went up, found a terrace that should have a good view of Fuji, but it was cloudy.

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This flu continues to be disturbingly minimal. Today I pretty much feel fine, I think. I still have a faint Flu A line on a CordRx covid/flu test from the USA, though.

I've tried several bought-in-Japan tests, and not a single one has registered anything. Flowflex (Japan), Meiji, Kobayashi (Amazon page) / Rabliss (actual box), complete no-name. If I trusted them, I would just have some minor under-the-weather-ness. Am I going to have to try to actually import tests from the US? Feh. (Well, just checked, and I can't, at least not the brands I'm familiar with.)

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Last night's sleep was short, and I tried something that supposedly will improve things after a while, but today sucked, so apart from shopping (yes, I can eat 3 fresh-baked sweet potatoes in a row) I didn't go out. So catch up on random stuff: ( Read more... )

Late start (not my fault I woke up at 4:30 AM), decided to go to Katase-Enoshima and explore the beach. I'm probably paying for (decent) beach access, compared to other places 90 minutes from Tokyo, might as well use it. ( Read more... )

I have returned. Another 90 minutes journey. Fortunately, the Shonan line emptied out at Shibuya so I got a seat most of the way.

Discoveries:

• the JR train doors are labeled with a sticker, "car 15 door 2". You'd think they'd like the flexibility of mixing units, but nope, a traincar is dedicated to being Car 15 for the rest of its life. Weird.

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I did make it out! Later than planned, but still. Tokyo National Museum (TNM), a big art museum, by 14:05 (ticket time). I figured it'd be a bit under 3 hours, but ticket price was 1000 yen, high for around here but a good deal by US standard.

Fun fact! Friday and Saturday, the museum closes at 20:00, 8 PM. So, like 5.5 hours after rest breaks, for US$7.( Read more... )

Say you order Amazon to a nearby pickup location, because of theft, or Airbnb, or whatever. ( Read more... )

Welp, guess I'm way behind on updates. Fortunately several days were boring. But not this one. Kind of.

Kamakura, as in "Kamakura Shogunate", was accessible, so I went. Outbound was on the Enoden train, no changes but still slower, scenic, single-track, kind of hugging the coast. ( Read more... )

Thanks to the pandemic, this isn't my first Christmas alone. Or even the first in another country. First in a country that doesn't care much about it, though. Japan does care a bit, so I thought I'd at least take a peek, after two days in for leg recovery and rain-avoidance.

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In non-Japanese news, I've been reading the Books of the Raksura. I think the Murderbot books are more entertaining, also better edited -- bunch of low level grammar errors in these. Still, they've become entertaining. I read "The Falling World" by mistake; going back to the actual first book was much more intelligible.

Watanare 7 is in the queue; I look forward to it with a mix of anticipation and "what drawn-out shenanigans now?" dread.

Watatabe anime continues to be good.

I read the Bovadium Fragments, a recently published Tolkien thing, basically a short satire about cars in Oxford, and political fight over a bypass road. Was interesting both for his writing and the historical context of cars taking over an newly-industrialized Oxford.

And, this should really have its own post, but a review article on whether it's fair to call SARS-Cov-2 "airborne AIDS". Short answer: strictly speaking no, they're pretty different. But there's a lot of evidence of SARS2 messing up your immune system in its own ways, with rising rates of other disease infections and maybe cancers, so in a "should I really try to avoid getting this?" sense, then yes.