happylife

An interesting program

My apartment has a monitoring camera in the entrance. It is connected to the cable line so that every resident can watch on his or her TV set who has come. Different from most intercom system with video, we can check the image taken by the camera whenever we like. As there are more than 100 families in my apartment, some one is almost always on the camera. It's interesting to see the live video because we can see real people not pretending like actors. It is sometimes much more interesting than usual TV programs. I think most people are voyeurs of a kind and I have to say I am one of them.

Caught on the highway

It was soon after I crossed the border. I was driving on I5 towards Redmond in the U.S. where my friends are living. I was following the car before me a little bit faster than 70 mph when suddenly red and blue lights came on. I was driving so smoothly and gently in a good manner that I couldn't understand why the lights came on. I changed the lane and the lights were still on just behind me, and I recognized for the first time that I was caught by them. As I know the cops in this country are sometimes very dangerous, I obeyed them and signed the ticket, but I can't still understand why I was caught. I believe I was far from danger. Anyway, it's a fact that I'm paying a fine every month in this year. How can I be more careful while driving?

Ice cream on the border

Before the border on the way to my friends' house in Redmond in the U.S., I found this ice cream seller again. I'm not sure if he is the same person whom I met last summer, but he was still selling the ice cream though it was a cold winter day. Of course there was no person who would buy an ice cream in the cold and dark weather. I think it's a good idea to sell something where a lot of people are waiting for something without anything to do, but he has to think one more thing - thinking about what people really want. If he sold hot food like hearty soup, he can get more money and the borders would be happier.

A new Cessna

While I was back to Japan for one month, my flight school bought two new Cessna, one of which I flew today for the first time. I hear that it came from a flight school around Campbell River. According to the journey log, there were few people who flew it in my school. It looked good, though I found a problem of the airplane. The identifier of the airplane "GQDM" is not familiar in the airspace around my school. Every time I called a tower, I was asked the identification and I had to say it fully again. It's a little bit tough for me to say optional things on radio call. Except for the problem, the airplane is not bad and I think I can fly it again after its name gets more familiar.

Google Analytics

I've just started using Google Analytics which is a free, web site analyzing service provided by Google. By embedding a special tag on each page, I can get a lot of information about my site such as when and from where the visitors came to my site. I've not fully understood the whole function of this service, but the most interesting one for me is that it shows where the visitors came from on the world map so that I can understand at a glance. As this blog is written in English, the visitors of my site are spreading all over the world except for Africa, which is quite different from my Japanese site where all the visitors come from Japan.

A merchant of death

I bought a carton of tobacco for the first time in my life. I have never smoked since I almost died of smoke when I was a very little child. My Japanese friend living in Vancouver asked me to buy and bring it, but he doesn't smoke either. Both he and I do not smoke, and what happens to the tobacco? He says he can sell it for 50 dollars in Canada which I got at 1,700 yen in Japan. As one dollar equals to 100 yen now, he can get a margin of 30 dollars! He is nothing but a merchant of death, and I have helped him. Forgive me!

Day and night

I came back to my room in Vancouver around 3 PM on Monday, and took a shower and went to bed. A few hours later, I was awaken by a phone call from my friend. After that I took a shower and went to bed again. I got up at 5 next. The view from the window was perfect except for one thing - a beautiful sunset was there. It was 5 PM though I felt like in the morning. My day and night are now completely reversed, and I know it takes almost one week for me to recover from this jet lag.

Delay

My airline was to take off at 7 in the evening from Narita. Though Narita airport is called "Tokyo International Airport," it takes about two hours from the center of Tokyo to the airport. We passengers are usually requested to check in two hours before the take off, so I left my house at 2:30 and went to a hotel with a bus stop for the airport in my mother's car. The bus for the airport was involved in a traffic jam and arrived at the airport after 5:30 which was 30 minutes behind the time table. The delay was no problem because the airline was delayed almost 3 hours. It was so late that I could receive a meal ticket of 2,000 yens as apologies of the airline. After I enjoyed a rich dinner, the airplane took off Narita at 9:45. Soon after the takeoff the next dinner was served and I got full.

The last day in Tokyo

It was the last day of my stay in Tokyo. I spent time preparing for going back to Vancouver - shopping and packing. As I know we can purchase almost everything in Vancouver including special Japanese food, I didn't buy so many things. What I bought was seven packs of retort curry, two bottles of Japanese sake for souvenir, dozens of Japanese books, and this toothbrush. Sure we can get a toothbrush in Vancouver, this one looked so interesting that I couldn't help buying it. It has two pieces of gum and they are explained to work just like an eraser cleaning the tooth stain. Anyway, my bag has been filled with these things and reached the weight limitation of the airline.

PET bottles

We can see these PET bottles all around a town in Tokyo. They are placed so that dogs and cats cannot urinate. These glittering PET bottles filled with water reflecting the sun light, have an effect to avoid animals. I understand how they would feel if animals urinate in front of their house every day, but these bottles look ugly - they even seem like garbage. On the other hand in Vancouver, we can rarely see such scene. I don't know the reason for the difference between these two cities. All I can say about this matter is that dogs and cats in Vancouver are happier because they can urinate without any disturbance.