Alvvays’ Belinda Says is the first song in ages that makes me deliberately drive more slowly so I can hear it all before I get home. I’m sure I look pretty silly as I sing along to the “See how it goes … See how it grows” bit but at least I’ll be providing some humour to whoever sees me.
A dumb thing: before I really listened to the lyrics I assumed the Belinda of the title was Belinda Butcher from My Bloody Valentine.
In Andrew Plotkin’s roundup of his favourite games of last year he mentioned that Tunic has a combat-free mode. I wish more games had something like this, especially Ghost of Tsushima. I’m sure a lot of people who are not into blood-soaked battles would very much enjoy walking and riding around Tsushima while visiting fox dens, composing haiku and working out how to get to each of the shrines. It would be a very different game experience but one that I think many people would enjoy.
Do I have a favourite Pavement song? I don’t think I do. Some I like more than others, but for the most part my favourite at any moment is the one I’m listening to right then.
But, of course, there are a dozen or so that exist on a level above all the rest. Among them, and the one I most hoped they’d play when they came to Perth was Fillmore Jive, which I’ve never heard live.
And play it they did. It was every bit as huge, soaring, swirling and glorious as I’d dreamt.
Why not Mars?
Maciej Ceglowski questions the wisdom of a manned mission to Mars.
While I was dozing off yesterday in a relaxation chair at a hot spring in the Japanese countryside my brain recognised a slight similarity in the bland piano background music to Dick Diver’s very much not bland song Amber and kept trying to match the lyrics to the music. It would get through a couple of lines of lyrics but then the music would veer off in a different direction, but again and again it kept on trying.
Of the issues with Mastodon raised by Dave Winer, the ones I’m most interested in are links and styles. It’s baffling to me that in 2023 we’re still looking at raw urls and that although I can insert little emoji as much as I like, I can’t make text italic or bold. These limitations kind of made sense in Twitter’s early days but make none for Mastodon.
He stands by the door, all ready to go — 250 yen in his left pocket, bus fare, and 550 yen in his right, which is for the subway. He knows he should probably get one of those cards that you can just tap through and not have to juggle handfuls of change. If pressed, he’d find it hard to explain why he hasn’t. The bus he had hoped to be on passes.
I made it through a week or so without having Calendar Days playing on repeat in my head.
It’s back now, especially the verse that goes “There’s a kind of quiet. A fighter jet’s applause. They’re all saw toothed fragments. Scattered in an empty hall.”
Despite the valiant attempt to disguise it, nothing can hide the futuristic technology lurking with this box plonked down randomly in the Sumiyoshi Taisha grounds.
It’s trying to fit in with this, so it’s a kind of high bar.
House vs Plant
Sumiyoshi Park in the evening
The platonic ideal of a cheeseburger
Sumiyoshi Lantern at dusk
Chiaki waiting at the station
One week into my Japan trip and I have not done much at all — lots of cleaning, spending time with family, eating and drinking — which is pretty much how I planned to spend the first week.
Shoji – work in progress
Probably the biggest home task I took care of was renewing all the shoji paper for our sliding doors and windows. It’s a fairly time consuming task that involves removing all the old paper, cleaning the frames then gluing new paper to them. I messed up the first one by getting the paper alignment wrong, but soon got in the swing of things. It’s not fun exactly but it is quietly satisfying.
We live in walking distance of Ishikiri Shrine, one of the major shrines in Osaka and our usual destination for our new year visit. Unfortunately, thousands of other people also head there. This year we gave it a miss on new year’s eve and went to a much smaller shrine closer to home. It was cool and laidback and the blazing fires were nicer to watch than anything at the big shrine.
I used to be very into audiobooks. I mostly listened to them while taking walks around the neighbourhood. It has been yonks since I listened to an audiobook. Not for any particular reason — just a thing that happened. Same thing for podcasts.
I have very clear locational connections between certain places in my neighbourhood and books I listened to well over a decade ago. Whenever I pass them, the voices of the narrators bubble up in my head. A corner I used to round on my way to work still puts me in mind of Dune. A temple a little up the mountain reminds me of Ender’s Game. And then there’s the park in the pictures here. This is totally the Pattern Recognition park. Walking there today, so much came came back to me — the Footage, Cayce’s Buzz Rickson jacket and the filed-down buttons on her Levis.
The other day I arrived back in Japan after three years away. After having closed its doors to foreign tourists for so long Japan is really keen to get people back here. You still have to show you’ve been triple vaccinated or have passed a recent PCR test but it seems like they’ve tried to make the process as easy as possible. Before you fly out you can upload your vaccination and PCR test information online so you only need to show a QR code when you get to Japan.
It’s a good idea to take screenshots of the three QR codes you need before leaving so you don’t have to mess about with the web app when you arrive. If you do that, though, make sure to include your name in the screenshot. Mine was cut out of the vaccination screenshot so I ended up having to show a paper copy of my vaccination certificate anyway. It didn’t take more than a minute, but I was on a flight that arrives to fairly early in the morning so didn’t have to wait at all. Your milage may vary.
To make things even smoother, they now let you fill in your disembarkation cards and quarantine questionnaires at the same time. So instead of scribbling answers on a terribly spaced Little form on a wobbly aeroplane table you can do it all beforehand and just show them the QR code. I really hope other countries, Australia especially, adopt some kind of online quarantine questionnaire. Having to fill out those forms while I’m in the air is one of the things I least like about travelling abroad.
Masks! Everyone is masked all the time. That wasn’t unexpected but still a bit of a shock at first, having come from Perth, where people mostly stopped wearing them when the mandates were lifted. It’s not just inside either. People wear masks even outside walking down the street by themselves. In just two days I’ve seen many people driving cars by themselves but still wearing a mask. Aside from the protection, both to yourself and others, masks have the benefit of helping to keep your face a little bit warmer in the chilly winter.
It was over ten years ago, but I still clearly remember the night I came home from work and was offered this delicious looking coffee spongecake. I spent a good long while trying to cut off a piece with my chopsticks. It was only when I saw the chopsticks bend that I realised that this was no ordinary cake or, in fact, a cake at all. Top marks to my wife and daughters for keeping a straight face throughout my struggles.
I’ve started playing Ghost of Tsushima’s Iki Island expansion. I’m playing it differently than I did the main Tsushima campaign. This time, whenever I see a golden bird flutter overhead, I follow it and find out where it leads instead of just rushing on to the next objective in the story. Ignoring them previously let me to miss many shrines, hot springs and chances to compose haiku. Following the birds, and exploring the question marks that pop up on the map has led to a much richer experience.
I love that Iki Island is a lush and colourful place. So much of the second part of ghost of Tsushima took place in its wintry north, which was decidedly less attractive than the autumnal hues of the first part.
I’m still battling through on medium level difficulty even though it quite often ends up with me dead. It’s character building, I suppose.
