Weekly Weekend Thread – 19 June 2023

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1. Signed the contract for my bike. It’s my first “big-boy” purchase paid for in cash and that stung a bit. Still, there’s basically zero chance of getting a loan on a property of the type/age I want and where I want without PR, so might as well use the money I was saving for something. Having the bike will make some things easier in my life, which is good. I just need to find some place with almost no traffic at first to practice driving. A bit nervous about getting it home when I pick it up next month, but I’m sure it will be fine.

   Re-arranged my whole garden (in my parking space that was unused) so that I will have room for said bike and to thin out some failures. My corn never came up (not surprising given the seeds were old and a bit weird) and now it’s too late for that. All but one of my garlic died. My black beans (as in kuro-ingen and not kuro-mame) are doing well, however, and have some pretty flowers. For some reason, all of my scallions but 1 pot died. I guess too much rain and not enough sun. My wife takes some each morning for her natto. I’ll probably plant some more.

   Started playing more with kbin (a reddit alternative) this weekend. It’s having some growing pains, but looks to be good. Hopefully in the coming weeks, it fills out some missing features. As of now, I only go to this subreddit and /r/rideitjapan still on reddit.

2. – Saturday: went to Kamakura with my husband. We went to the beach too but didn’t swim. I brought a few nice seashells home, gave them a good wash and currently thinking about what to do with them/what to make.
   – Sunday: Was exhausted from Saturday, just stayed home in the AC. Did usual cleaning, laundry, played some games, that’s pretty much it.

3. Why is the husband of hirosue kyoko crying and apologizing on public tv??

4. Went to the dermatologist for my hair, he notices my scalp is sore, I say I had a dandruff issue recently, he gives me a strong ointment for soreness and nothing for actually treating the condition.

   Like bruh, I’m not just scratching myself for funsies, if I didn’t have dandruff I wouldn’t scratch it. Maybe treat that too, ya know…

5. Saturday I took my kids to the park for some water gun play, little one loves it, big one not so much (I’m an overwhelming force, sue me). At one point when the little one tumbled and I went to make sure she was okay, the big one vanishes.

   Two solid minutes of that is gut wrenching. So that’s when I start to shout out for him. So that’s when he leaps from the bushes behind me with two scavenged PET bottles and drenched me. I highly doubt he cleaned those dirty-ass bottles, but goodness, did he get me good. And I thought he was ignoring all my little life advice?

   Sunday, we went to a festival, and it’s just nice to see shit back to normal. Hit one stand, see another has a surplus, go there and get a freebie or two, line shifts there, Capitalism, Ho! and a fun family time

6. Went for a hike on Saturday and stepped on a mamushi. When I felt it wriggling under my foot, jumped up and it lunged at my foot. Bit above my ankle with one fang and got my shoe with the other. Luckily, it was a dry bite and just a little soreness for a day and I was good.

   Just a lesson to keep an eye out on those trails!

7. My Japanese credit card and ETC card arrived this weekend. Now every time I turn on my car instead of there 「ETCカードを入れてください」I get some nice chirps that I call the sound of success 😂

   Picked up two beautiful 御朱印this weekend and got to feed fish at a temple. The fish and turtles were sooooo cute and followed me around the pond. Will 100% be going back there regularly for the goshuin and adorable animals.

   Decided to swing by a 2nd street and spotted some beautiful yukata for only 500¥. Even more lucky, they are in my size! This can be a little difficult as I’m 165cm tall and according to a kimono shop that measured me, my arms are too long for any women’s yukata/kimono, but I’m used to it 😂. Anyhow I brought two home and now just need to find some obi for them. So excited for festival season.

8. Watched Knives Out for the first time and I’m still reeling about the donut hole bit Daniel Craig makes that movie.

   Also watched Black Dynamite and now I can never unhear “DYNOMITE. DYNOMITE.”

9. Bough a rog ally with 30 days money back refund campaign.
   Is already in box ready for refund lol 😂

10. Went Cainz-Costco this weekend to get some few things for the garden and stock up on stuff I don’t have at the grocery store, baby slept in the car both ways, and went to bed roughly on time, it was a good day.

    Sunday went to the Lord of the rings Magic the Gathering prerelease to play in sealed. Awesome experience. The art is gorgeous, the mechanics for sealed tournament plays very well. Only negative is I didn’t check enough the spoilers and lost a LOT of time reading the cards, and this caused me a headache by Japanese overload, meaning it’s good, it made my brain work. Definitely recommend

    Got my asus Rog Ally, set it up and installed the game I wanted. Haven’t played a lot with power/perf/overclocking yet but I have the profiles I want in mind and it’s the next step.

    I really need to wake up early one day this week and spray the strawberries because we got a huge infestation of slugs… I don’t like it but they eat more berries than we do so they have to go.

11. Went to an event in Ueda, Nagano on Saturday. Finished that, checked into my hotel (which was a few stations over) then went back to Ueda around midnight for an afterparty. Of course, the trains were done after that and the taxi wanted 7k to get to my hotel. Ended up walking from Ueda to hotel near Togura station (~15km) and arrived right at the sunrise. Enjoyed the walk anyway, temperature was nice. Got a bit of sleep, hopped over to Ishikawa-ken to check out NT金沢, then ran out of things to do so watched the new Spooderman and enjoyed it. Caught a flight back to Haneda which was a bit late taking off and landing, but didn’t have any other plans so just went back home directly.

    10/10 weekend, would not do again (too tired). Ended up walking around 30km across 2 days.

12. Went to a showroom and finally bought2 more dinning chairs, a coffee table and a tv stand. A funny thing (not so funny) is when I went with my Taiwanese gf to talk to the Japanese concierge of our building to ask about the elevator specs (the tv stand is huge), I started to speak in Japanese, he totally ignored me and was looking at my gf like “OK, you want something?..”… He always does that to the point that I am waiting their shift to talk to another concierge because he is so rude.

13. Wife and I went to see Spider-Verse and then went out to eat at a new Korean place near our apartment. Our son stayed with my in-laws so it was a nice date night. First one in a long time. On Sunday I did a deep cleaning of our apartment and balcony and front entrance area while listening to podcasts, then went for a run with my son after he came home. Pretty great weekend overall.

14. Went to see a private kindergarten for my son next year. Turns out people who get referred by the parents of current students get to skip the waiting line… Wish the government would ban such practices…

15. Went to Camp Inn Miyama in Kihoku, Mie with some colleagues. The trip down was kind of confusing since I’ve never been down that way, but I made it. Met some old friends and made some great new ones. We had a lot of fun in the river on Saturday and I even saved a kid from drowning as he was getting carried away by the current (I have no idea where his parents were because he was alone). We had a nice BBQ that evening and then packed up Sunday to check out.

    Definitely achieved my goal of getting a good dose of sun. Too much actually, despite my efforts not to burn up. Now I’m religiously using the aloe cream kept cold in my refrigerator.

16. Stayed at a Ryokan and Onsen in Gunma. It was cool in the mountains and near the river and it was great to escape the heat. Not as bustling as Hakone but that’s the beauty of it, sometimes you just need get away from everything.

17. Got 2 out of 4 of nice events this past Sunday:

    Took son to Dominos Pizza Academy. For ¥2000, kids get their own hat & apron and create their own personal pizza. Highly recommended!!!

    Took son to swimming school. He passed a swimming test and went up a rank!

    There was an anime/manga-con at the station. Seller tables didn’t have anything interesting for sale and cosplayers didn’t want their picture taken even though I paid the extra photographer fee and asked if it was ok.

    There was also a model garage-kit competition that I entered. Basically, judges decided anyone entering who put their kids name (under the age of 12) on the form got a prize/award. I saw some really good dioramas and awesome painted models that should’ve gotten recognition.

18. Hiked Kaikoma in the southern alps! Was a little bit worried about the 2500m elevation gain but made it up in only 5.5h and carried camping gear for the majority too.

    Love the accomplished feeling after hiking.

19. Sorry I cannot wait until the stupid questions thread but, how in the name of Satan can I get an JAF online translation of my country’s license? Has anyone done it recently ?

    I have been trying to find the correct page but the info site takes you to the How to apply and the How to apply to the info site so I can’t move forward to the actual translation.

20. Wife and I visited Hamura Zoo to see the baby beavers (they didn’t come out) and it was probably the worst zoo I’ve ever been to. It kind of broke something inside of me, and I don’t know. I need zoo recommendations.

    My wife loves zoos, even when they’re horrific, because frankly she only knows Japanese zoos. She reasons that, well, at least the animals are safe and fed, which is better than dying in the wilderness, right?

    Some of the “animal parks” and petting zoos we’ve been to were all right. I think when people have to share space with animals, they put more effort into it.

    I don’t know. Everywhere my wife and I go, it’s always so run-down. Like, you can tell it was amazing 10 or 20 years ago – maybe 50 years ago, but nobody’s kept it up properly since. A lot of ryokans have that feeling, a lot of parks, a lot of zoos, a lot of the offices I visit for work.

    I felt so…empty all weekend. Just…sad and hopeless. Like, no matter how much time and effort my wife and I spend to get out of the house and go to these places, it’s always going to be this kind of experience.

21. Saturday: 二度寝’d, did laundry, then went to lunch at hinoya curry that was just opened three days prior. Went to the arcade, and somehow felt a bit dizzy an hour into it. Maybe because of how blazing hot that day was. Went straight home and drank EVE, headache gone within an hour. Spent the rest of the day chatting with friends over discord.

    Sunday: This is it, the big day. Had my first 400cc bike lesson. Bike was a CB400SF. Boy it is way heavier and bigger than I thought. Luckily I can still reach the ground with a tiptoe. Had no trouble with the clutch, learned to go from a standstill within 5 minutes and had no major trouble switching between gears, signaling, turning, and stopping at intersections. Glad I drove stick-shifts for 8 years. At the end of the lesson got a two thumbs up from the instructor. Heck yeah.

    Kinda felt bad for the other student that was with me the entire lesson, took her an hour to be able to go from a standstill, and another hour to gain the courage to speed up and go into 4th gear. Wishing her the best of luck.

22. flew back from my business trip in the states. the past week there solidified my intent to never go back permanently if I can help it.

    once I got back home, I had a bowl of rice and natto. life is good.

23. Just a much-needed relaxing weekend. Finally got to go to a nice cafe I’ve been curious about, and the food/coffee/atmosphere was much better than expected.

    Got a big batch of basil from the balcony garden to make pesto. Didn’t turn out as great as I hoped, but the meal was redeemed by some homemade focaccia, though.

    I’ve already got umeshu going (one is five years old and a real treat) but the thread over the weekend inspired me to start a batch made with gin in my unused container.

24. It seems my time has come, and two ladies finally approached me in a Game Center weirdly and suspiciously, trying to insert us into a cult thing.

    My husband and I were playing in one particular UFO Catcher, trying to get one Sailor Moon prize, when suddenly two ladies started to talk with us, questioning about my tattoos, Sailor Moon, Hunter x Hunter (this one got me in a way……..), our country, if we live in Japan, where we live in Japan, etc…

    At first, I assumed I was so delighted about being able to speak in Japanese (N5, moving to N4) that I didn’t realize what was happening in there.

    After this massive amount of questions, they invited us to go somewhere else, and THEN I realized the real problem. I tried to move to another date, like “maybe next Saturday” and they actually accepted.

    They asked me one way to communicate with us, and the idiot here shared my Instagram account with them.

    My husband FINALLY got the prize, and we just disappeared from there (Ikebukuro) because THEY WERE FOLLOWING US.

    When we returned home, I received a message in, yes, my NATIVE MOTHER TONGUE from one of them asking if we could change our “date” to another location and hour.

    I mentioned this situation on Twitter and started to see many other comments non-related to my story, but it seems other people went through the same thing this weekend.

    Brace yourselves… the cult time is coming again.

25. Bought my first car in Japan.

    And while I originally wanted to pay for the whole car – with the economy nowadays, I feel better knowing the money is in the bank.

    Amazing that they agreed to 50% down payment and the rest in loan. Read so much about loans not getting approved for people without PR. They didn’t even ask for a guarantor. Somewhat feel like I’m trusted even though it isn’t quite so personal!

    Also upgrading from a Prius to a Lexus NX is quite a dream come true!

26. Worked saturday 1am to 6am after switching friday to leg day and also running on like 4hrs sleep from the day before. Felt like I was drunk the entire day but work is work and money is money

    Tried my best to study but my focus was flighty the entire weekend and I feel that I’m retaining barely a tenth of what I’m inputting.

    Overate.

    I can’t believe June is almost over- compared to May or April it felt like it barely happened at all.