happylife

Pros and Cons

All these small boxes are so called mobile routers. I usually carry one or two of them in my bag so I can connect to the Internet and do my work in a cafe, train seat or anywhere I like. Thanks to these small devices, I have acquired freedom of working location, but it's not perfect yet. Why do I have so many boxes? The reason is very stupid. Not one of them fully satisfies my requirements. My requirements are very simple; to connect to the Internet for hours with enough speed from anywhere. From left to right, each device is called the Bmobile, Emobile and WiMAX. The Bmobile has the biggest service area, but its speed is restricted up to 300KB which is not enough for receiving movie, voice and large images. It costs about 3,000 yen per month, but it's free if I never use it entire month. So, I use it only when I have to connect to the Internet from a very remote area or a basement room. It's like an emergency box for me. The WiMAX is the latest product in my collections. Its speed is wonderful if once connected, however, it's rather hard to find a spot within in its range even in Tokyo. It costs 600 yen per 24 hours and is charged only when I use it. The Emobile has the intermediate speed and coverage. Its speed is barely enough for watching YouTube and it worked very well in Kushiro. One problem is that its battery capacity is too small. I can't use it continuously more than three hours without power cable. It costs from 1,400 yen to 5,000 yen which depends on how much data was transferred in a month. For now, I'm mainly using the Emobile, but I will change it whenever a better service is provided. I wish the iPhone can be used as a mobile router in the near future. Technically, the iPhone already has such function but it's restricted by the cellphone carrier in Japan. From an ordinary consumer's point of view, the situation of mobile data service in Japan is annoying because great technology is blocked by legal restrictions and carrier companies' ego.

Pen Revolution

FRIXION is the product name of a revolutionary ballpoint-pen. It seems to be just an ordinary ballpoint-pen -- it will be difficult to distinguish this pen from any other pens. Its colors, writing touch, thickness, and size are just the same as other rollerballs. However, that is the greatest point of this pen while it has a really great function which is hidden in its ink. The lines and characters written with this pen can be erased just by rubbing on it with a rubber tip built into the end of the pen body, and you can re-write and re-erase on the same paper again and again. Sure, the same things can be done using traditional pencils and erasers, but pencil lines are not so stable and the powder of pencil lead soils the surface of the paper over a long time. On the other hand, this rollerball has both the benefit of traditional rollerballs and pencils -- it is literally an "erasable rollerball." The mechanism of the erasability is quite simple. The ink has the nature of turning itself colorless over 60℃. This temperature looks so high as an air temperature but it can be reached very easily by rubbing or whatever heating. I experimented by drawing lots of thick lines with this pen and erasing them at one time using a hair dyer. It worked perfectly! 

One More Week

I have stayed here in Kushiro for sixteen weeks and will leave for Sapporo in a weeks time. My four-month stay in this northern city is coming to an end soon. I can say that this stay was one of the best decisions of my life just because I could escape from the extreme heat this summer. No-one in any other city in Japan could enjoy such a comfortable summer. However, comfort does not always contribute to productivity. My business schedule is totally upset as I enjoyed it there too much. I'm now a little bit hectic to compensate for the big delay. 

Salmon Roe

In the last two decades, sushi has become a popular menu item all around the world. I could find a sushi restaurant even in a remote town in Canada or in the U.S. Known as one of the most healthy food, lots of Western people, especially interested in their health, often choose sushi as their lunch menu. While tuna and salmon are very popular among them, they don't seem to like salmon roe. West Coast of upper North America is one of the biggest salmon fishing grounds and we can often see big salmons here and there, however, it is rather difficult to get salmon roe both in a shop and in a restaurant. Most of them seem to be exported to Asian countries. I don't know why Western people don't like it. Sure, it is rather oily and not so healthy, but that will not be the reason because they like way more greasy food. The other day, I enjoyed Ikura Don which means salmon roe on rice served in a bowl. White rice was covered with a thick salmon roe layer. I enjoyed the happy feeling of popping out of each roe with salty flavor spreading in my mouth.

 

Why Kushiro?

More than one month has passed since I came to Kushiro. This is my third anniversary staying in this dark and cool city. I stayed here for about three months every summer in the last two years and I'm thinking about staying here until the end of this summer, too. Why do I stay in this city so often? The first reason is its cool weather. The temperature here is mostly under 20 degrees even in midsummer while everyone is going mad in the muggy days in Tokyo. It's rare to see blue skies because Kushiro is one of the most foggy cities in Japan, but that is no problem for me as I am staying here not for sight seeing. I'm mostly staying in my hotel room and facing towards the computer all day long. The foggy weather is rather good for me because I don't have to surrender to temptation of traveling around. The second reason is the atmosphere of this city. It's like a ruined city in a word. All the shopping buildings around the central station are abandoned and few people are walking around especially after dark. The suburb area is rather busier, but I am staying near the station. I often feel like that I am the last man in the world when I walk around my hotel in the midnight. What an  eccentric and mysterious experience! Sure it's not convenient to live in such an environment, but I can get any books, gadgets and whatever I want from the Internet . All I have to shop is daily foods and I go shopping to the nearest supermarket or go eating out by bicycle couple of times a week. I think it's a good age because we can enjoy convenient life in an inconvenient city owing to the Internet.

 

The Shift from Japan

The Golden Age of Japan seems to have finished in the recent decades. I often have this feeling in my daily life. This picture is the receipt which I received from the Apple the other day. Sure, it has no problem as an official document, but most Japanese must feel it is weird. The font on the receipt is something weird; the shape of each character and the total balance of them. They might have regenerated from Chinese original font. Actually, the product I purchased was sent from the Apple factory not in any cities in Japan but in Shanghai. I guess that there is no native Japanese staff over there. It is not always a bad thing if the product prices can be reduced in this way, but I can't help feeling lonely as one Japanese who knows the age when all the world was looking toward Japan.

 

The Second Life of Old MacBook

It was just two years ago when I got this MacBook. It is running perfectly except for two little things; the track pad cannot be clicked and the swelled battery makes the notebook wobbling on a desk. The other day I called the support center of Apple and got to know that it would cost around 70,000 yen to fix all the problems. The support staff said on the line that my warranty is already expired. I regretted not to have bought three-year warranty when I got this MacBook, but it cost more than 30,000 yen. I was too expensive! As I didn't like to pay so much money only to recover the MacBook, I decided to have new one. It cost almost three times more than repairing, but I've got two MacBooks. Of course the new one is great, but the old one works way more than I expected. I hooked it on the wall closing the lid and throwing away the swelled battery. I'm using it as a server machine. It is working as a storage server, scanner server and TV and radio server. Although the lid of this server is closed which is called "a clamshell mode", it can be controlled perfectly from the new MacBook or even from the iPhone through the network. If you have an old MacBook which has some problems with its track pad, keyboard, battery and display, I strongly recommend that you get new one and use the old one as a server machine.

 

eneloop

It was almost three years ago when I began to use this eneloop battery and now all of the batteries around me have been replaced to it. It is a so called rechargeable battery which can be recharged about 1,000 to 1,500 times. The biggest difference from traditional rechargeable batteries is that it is hardly to be discharged freely in the air. It is said that while other batteries are fully discharged in a few months, the eneloop keeps 85% of energy even one year after full charge. It is sold with full charged in shops so customers can start using it at once without recharging it. Sure it is more expensive than traditional alkaline batteries, but it is not as 1,000 times expensive. Plus, it has less environmental impact to the earth because if all the batteries were replaced to it, it means that the total amount of traditional battery garbage could be reduced to one thousandth.

 

radiko

"radiko" is the radio service name which newly started this week in Tokyo and Osaka area. It is just a radio broadcasting service using the Internet. It is one of so called an Internet radio services. Its radio programs are just the same as the existing ones. That's it and not more than that. Sure, the Internet radio is not a brand new technology, but it is an epoch-making event for us Japanese to enjoy traditional radio programs on the Internet. It must have been a very hard way to start it clearing copyright and some other problems. In spite of its attractive contents, radio services had been losing its favor in the last decades for some reasons; tall, tight and concrete buildings in the city interfere with radio waves; portable music players including iPod have been increasing and occupied our time and ears; highly developed cellphones instead of radios can now provide us with news and entertainment information. Analog radio seemed to have finished its role, however, this radiko service may have the power to revive the traditional radio. With this new service, we can enjoy very clear digital sounds using PC and it will be possible to enjoy them using cellphones including iPhone in the near future. More and more people can enjoy them because they already have some devices connected to the Internet and they don't have to purchase any new gadgets to use this service.

 

Baby Drift Ice

I got on an ice breaker yesterday, and finally I watched the purpose of this trip. The drift ice was so small that the ticket for the ship was sold at thirty percent off the regular price. Sure, the bigger and thicker the better, but the baby drift ice was attractive enough for me and I could feel the greatness of the Nature. Doesn't the bird in this picture look like an eagle, though it is just a seagull? Don't you think this picture would be perfect if I cropped one third of the upper blue water part? This might be a kind of compromise, but I am satisfied and am going back to Tokyo tomorrow.