happylife

Innovation of Eraser

Because of the progress of digital technology including a personal computer and a PDA, my chance of using a pencil and paper has decreased dramatically. However, these primitive tools, which I have been accustomed to since my school days, still have a great advantage to those digital tools. When I think about abstract ideas, a pencil in my hand is way more helpful than any modern computer. One reason is that I can get relax with a pencil while I feel more or less nervous in front of computers. Another reason is that digital tools are far from perfect and they can't be transparent while analog tools are so simple that I don't have to be conscious about them. That's why I sometimes enjoy shopping in a stationary shop browsing interesting analog tools. Today's game was this innovative eraser. It doesn't look like an eraser, but it can erase pencil lines very perfectly. It is composed of a sticky roller and a plastic cover. Can you guess how it works? All you have to do is roll the roller on pencil drawings which you want to erase. The sticky roller catches the lead of a pencil without creating dust and damaging the paper at all. If the sticky roller becomes dirty, you can roll it on a piece of duct tape to remove the lead and you can use it again and again. It costs less than $2! Isn't it cool?

The Backache is Back

I don't remember how many times I have suffered this kind of pain in these five years. The pain has come back again to disturb my peaceful life. It never goes away whether I lie down, sit, stand or whatever position I take. It's literally a continuous pain. The Chinese character which implies "back" is composed of two parts; one has the meaning of "body" and the other has the meaning of "important." Yes, the back where I have the terrible pain right now is really an important part of our body. It was only one month ago when the last pain came. The frequency of its visit is clearly increasing. It's so often that I now know what I should do in this case -- to take a rest, to change the posture as often as possible and not to eat too much. I also know the benefit of this pain -- it's really effective for dieting. I'm going to take this pain as the warning from my body that my weight is too much.

Demolition Work

My happy morning sleep has been disturbed for these five days because of the demolition work of my neighbor house. As my room is adjacent to the demolition site, I can see their whole work from the best seat. Sure the dust, noise and vibration are terrible, I can fully enjoy the demolition show instead. The first part of the show was boring because the whole house was covered with construction sheets and five workers were mainly working inside the house. However, it has changed since yesterday after a new hero came on stage. The hero has a pair of caterpillar tread and a huge, iron claw which can break off a thick wooden column in a moment. I don't know its actual name even in Japanese. It is not a bulldozer but very close to it. For most people, building a house is one of their biggest events in their life. A lot of people sink most of their money into it setting up a loan, but it is so fragile that just a one hit of the claw breaks it off. After enjoying the climax of the show, I couldn't help feel the vanity of life.

A Kitchen Timer

It is sometimes a good idea to limit our time. As we are a lazy animal, we don't move until the deadline comes close. Projects without deadline will not be accomplished forever. A kitchen timer is a useful gadget for limitation of short range time span -- I usually set 15 minutes for writing this blog article. I had been using the built-in timer of the iPhone until I got this carrot-shaped kitchen timer. The advantage of this single purpose timer to the iPhone's built-in timer is its easy operation and loud alarm sound. As you can see on the picture, we can set the time of 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute and 10 seconds by one touch operation. We can set 15 minutes by tapping 10 minutes and 5 minutes button. As we rarely need to set the time for example 18 minutes and 15 seconds, this user interface usually works better than the iPhone. When I feel sleepy, I set this timer 30 minutes and go to bed. Before enjoying net surf or playing video game, I set it 20 minutes. If you feel you are wasting time, this gadget will save your precious time.

Shinjuku

Shinjuku is my home town. This picture might depict the typical impression of ordinary people to this town -- skyscrapers, lots of people, bright city lights until midnight and so on. However, Shinjuku is a big city and my living area is far from this image. There are no high buildings with more than five floors, no all-night bars and no crowds. Of course there is no nature such as streams, forests and mountains. All we can see around my area is a small subway station, a few convenient stores and lots of apartments. It's not so convenient and not so pleasant. Furthermore, the situation is gradually getting worse year by year. The number of useless parking lots is increasing and old big houses are being divided into small and cheesy houses. I recognized this bad tendency more than ten years ago and I can't find any clues to stop it. I don't like this area any more though it is my home town. I have been looking for a better place to live in and have found some candidates such as Vancouver, Obihiro and Sapporo, but they are still not perfect. So my idea is to live and move among those cities. As far as I have practiced this idea for a few years, it is rather pleasant. In order to keep going this way, I have to do some more things and that this is my objective this year.

A Self-converted Ballpoint Pen

It's a good idea to always carry a small notebook in your pocket with a small ballpoint pen. You can always jot down any idea, memo and whatever you like onto it. I had been looking for a good ballpoint pen which is short enough to bind aside of my small notebook and also which is smooth enough to write with. I had been using a Japanese, cheap ballpoint pen which has so called "gel ink." It is, I think, one of the greatest innovations in the ballpoint pen industry -- It is as smooth as waterborne pen and it never bleeds just like an oil-based pen without making lumps. It was good except for one thing -- too cheesy! The other day, I found a well designed, small ballpoint pen on the Internet and after a second, I clicked the purchase button out there. It is made in Italy and I loved it at first sight, however, I was really disappointed with its terrible ink performance-- it was far from smoothness and it leaves a lot of lumps on the paper. I tried to used the Japanese gel ink with the Italian ballpoint pen. I had to cut and trim the ink cartridge but I succeeded in converting the two pens into one ideal pen. It is a good combination of Japanese high-tech and Italian design.

Old but Good Media

As you can read on this package, this shark-fin-shaped gadget is a radio tuner and capturer for PC and Mac. I've been using it since last month and I think it was one of my best shopping recently. Sure we can enjoy so called the Internet radio on our PC without this device, but I prefer traditional radio broadcastings. The DJs are more professional, the talks are more sophisticated and the choices of songs are full of variations. For some reasons such as copyright problem, the traditional radio and the Internet are not fused well especially in Japan. They have to glow together in the future, but it may take years. I think this device makes up the gap between them. Just by connecting the shark-fin-shaped gadget to the USB port of Mac and installing small software, we can listen and record any traditional radio program on the Mac. As we can use timer recording and the recorded data is saved into the iTunes library, we can enjoy any radio program on the iPod or iPhone. It's really convenient and I never feel bored while waiting for a train or someone away from home.

Shinkansen Super Express

When I came back from the sailing in Wakayama, I used a Shinkansen Super Express for the first time in these almost ten years. I used to board Shinkansen very often when I was an employed business man and to tell the truth, I didn't like it very much because of its business like atmosphere. It used to be full of businessmen who were doing business conversations or document works in the morning and who smelled alcohol at night in the car. All those things were packed in a blocked space and I sometimes had light claustrophobia. However, the train this time, whose nickname was Nozomi, was a little bit different from what I knew as Shinkansen. Sure, the time when I traveled was off the business hours, but the car itself had developed much from older type of Shinkansen. As you might know, Shinkansen runs on a special wide rail system which is independent of normal railways. Making the best use of the wide rail, the Nozomi had ultimately spacious cars. I could fully stretch my legs on the seat. Also I could connect to the Internet in the car and enjoy video on my MacBook. It was so pleasant that I wasn't bored at all. I think that Shinkansen is the best way to travel around major cities in Japan.

After a Long Break

The other day, I went to Wakayama to enjoy sailing after a long break. According to my blog, it was more than two years ago when I sailed in Vancouver last. I hadn't even touched a sailing boat since then because sailing is not so common in Japan. It's really weird as Japan is surrounded by the ocean. Anyway, I sailed my friend's friend's boat this time, which was way more gorgeous and well designed than any other boats I have boarded in Canada. It sailed at more than seven knots with a gentle breeze and we could enjoy dinner watching a high-vision TV in the cabin. They are planning to sail to Okinawa to watch the eclipse of the sun this July and I was invited to the eclipse cruising. That must be great. I'm really looking forward to it, but I'm scared of the hard weather -- July is the Typhoon season and Okinawa is one of the most notorious mecca for Typoon!

The Reason for the Spread

When I was a boy, there used to be standing several ticket examiners at every gate of stations and they used to examine and punch all the passengers' tickets every time. We can't see such a scene now because automatic ticket gates have spread all around the country. As automatic ticket gates need to check every ticket both when passengers get in and out, they must be placed at every station gate on the train network. The required number of machines is almost countless. It must have been a big investment to change all the human gates to machine checkers. Furthermore, at least one human examiner needs to be placed at every gate of all the stations in case of emergency. This picture just depicts the case -- my friend's ticket jammed in the machine and a human station staff is repairing it. Why did they dare to introduce such costly machines? The lost money by illegal train-ride must have been bigger than whole the cost of this machine. Since a few years ago, ticketless machines which record passengers' tracks wirelessly in their cell phones have been spreading and illegal train-ride has become almost impossible. Sure it is fair and square, but I sometimes miss the simple ticket system in Vancouver.