Falling behind on daily updates, oh well. Quick check-in:
I don't particularly like Sapporo as a city; it feels like the USA and USSR had an ugly baby. Wide streets, lots of parking lots, lots of blocky high buildings, not enough businesses and street life for the inferred density (possibly incorrect: high building + parking lot = not that dense.)
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Skipping forward yet again in my travels... yesterday I flew from Osaka to Sapporo. Goal: to catch sakura (cherry blossom) season, since I missed most of Honshu's due to being in Taiwan for visa-waiting (though I did catch some blossoms in the past week of Osaka.) Impressions... eh. ( Read more... )
USA: flying needs increasingly onerous ID.
Japan and Australia: why would flying need ID at all? (Domestic flights.)
I'm not sure about other countries, chime in if you know.
I finally rented a bicycle in Japan. It took some effort: paying for a Mobal eSIM, it being the only easy way of getting a phone number. Going to an office to show my passport and get the process started. Getting back home and finishing signup or something. Waiting for someone to actually activate the number the next morning. Then figuring out how install the new eSIM (actually confusingly easy), and panic because my Google Voice wasn't sending texts. (Turns out G Voice simply does not send SMS outside of the US or Canada.) ( Read more... )
This morning I got up and out much earlier than usual -- particularly out, showering and getting dressed without stopping by my laptop. So by 8 AM I was wandering around, getting morning sun, and observing all the other people out, going to school or strolling or whatnot. The shopping street just north of me was still depressingly shuttered, but activity was high. Walking. Biking. Wheelchairs in the middle of the street.
On seeing the wheelchairs I realized: "no cars", and while these streets are usually low-traffic, this seemed to be no-traffic, and an expectation thereof. So I paid more attention to the signs, and found: ( Read more... )
I'm just falling behind on posts. Haven't finished the tail end of my Osaka visit, and now I have Taipei stuff queued. But to try to reset to where I am... US passports get you into much of the world with little hassle, for a 90 day (sometimes 30) visit. But what happens after that?
Schengen Area is pretty strict: only 90 out of the past 180 days. If you want to perpetual tourist there, you have to spend half your time outside: UK, maybe some of the Balkans, or Morocco. OTOH some Asian countries are said to not care; I've read about people basically hopping back and forth over the Thai border to reset their visas, and a comment claimed Taiwan doesn't care either. For Japan, OTOH, Immigration officials are said to get suspicious if you seem like you're working illegally via fast cycling. But apparently a 2nd visit with a 5 week outing doesn't trigger flags; my return was as unquestioned as my first arrival, and I'm back in Osaka. ( Read more... )
I said before that the neighborhood parks here seemed nicer than the usual ones in Japan. That was with two data points, and now I have 7.
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Guess what I've seen two of in Taipei: Trader Joe's shopping bags. My host brought some kitchen stuff in one, and tonight a woman on the escalator had one (bright pink logo), a bag with end pockets. Is there a TJ in Taiwan, or anywhere outside of the USA? No. Are people bringing them back from the US? Yes, at least somewhat: my host says her friend brought that one back for her. Is someone making knockoff bags locally? Wouldn't surprise me... An 'askai' web page said TJ is 'hip' in Taiwan, with imported products and people asked to bring stuff; it's obviously unreliable but I suppose something might have fed into that.
Makes me wonder if I could sell my bag for anything. It's very very old, possibly back to the 90s, with no structure -- it's just a sack, great for stuffing in my backpack. Don't particularly want to sell it, and I doubt an ugly old bag has much value, but it'd be amusing.
A few days ago I got looking into traffic mortality statistics. Wikipedia, World Population Review, World Life Expectancy, Our World in Data. The weird thing is that some countries have wildly different numbers across these sites: Vietnam is 30.6 deaths/100,000 people, 17.7, 29.8, 23.4. Granted the years are different -- 2019, 2021, 2020??, 2023, but still a big swing... though I guess 2021 being really low could actually make sense (covid lockdowns?). OTOH, the 2020 is high.
(Our World lets you examine earlier years, but doing so still doesn't match the other sources.)
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Haven't been doing much exciting, largely staying home and reading Cherryh. Had an illness scare a couple days ago, throat feeling off and me preferring high temperature, but it broke after a day.
I was running low on cash, went out to ATMs tonight, and discovered not all convenience stores here have ATMs, neither the Family Mart nor the 7-11. Other branches may, but not those. Used Hilife, later found my supermarket has the same ATM, closer.
At the supermarket I saw someone bike up, simply prop his bike against the wall, and go in. This shouldn't be surprising given all the unlocked bikes I've seen, but still.
Science! I'd suspected my old fridge was warm, confirmed it with my Aranet (and found that Bluetooth can penetrate the fridge walls), and reported the 10 C temps to my host. Yesterday I got a new fridge, with a warning to let the compressor oil settle for 4 hours before turning it on; I'd have liked a warning about that so I could run down my food. But it's on now, and indeed much colder, I've measured as low as 1.5 C near the bottom on max power, though it's a bit warmer right now. Warmest on the upper shelf of the fridge door, as high as 7 C there. I've supplemented the Aranet with some cups of water at various levels in the fridge, so I can stick my instant meat thermometer in and measure them.
I bought a package of Taiwanese sausage tonight, only realizing at home that it's raw. I started microwaving a couple, then switched to the rice cooker's steamer basket; less likelihood of explosion. I may finally break out the hot plate for the rest.
Guess I haven't had a Major Outing since the museum visit of the 11th. Keep dithering and getting out late, or having an online social event in the morning, or (yesterday) actually waking up after noon because I guess my body needed it. I've been out, but it's been small things like reading in the nice park, or going out for sushi... actually, I guess the 16th did add up to an Outing; I went to the Sushiro east of me, then walked north through a wet market, then a not-yet-open night market, to the river. ( Read more... )
Have I mentioned that I'm around the corner (and across an intersection) from a Taoist temple here? Yesterday (Saturday) at 6 AM I'd heard some music, and later fireworks, but hadn't gone out. Tonight around 8:40 PM I heard it again, and quickly went out. Album
I don't know if a procession had actually marched around some distance, but what I saw when I got there was like the end of a small parade, with people in giant costumes, the portable tabernacle or whatever, a barrel of fire (did not photograph well, there's just a glow). Also a brief attack of fireworks, some line of things on the ground that were set off, loud bright and smokey.
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I looked at more bicycles today, and saw some with Japan's over-wheel center kickstands. At first I thought they had O-locks too, but I didn't see any more, and now I wonder if I mistook rim/caliper brakes for an O-lock. I saw two bikes that were locked to something, but most are freestanding; maybe half have a cable lock through a wheel, so someone can't trivially ride off with it; the rest have no visible lock, maybe just counting on low crime and looking like rusty pieces of shit.
I went to a pho stall and pointed at a photo that looked nice. It turned out to have "duck blood tofu", blood coagulated into big cubes with a consistency like that of tofu. I ate one cube and part of the other. It was not deeply repulsive; if I hadn't known it was blood I might have eaten it without blinking. Knowing... I decided to stop and see if my stomach would revolt from new food or a surplus of iron.
I forget if I've talked about it in the travel series, but a distinctive feature of Japanese housing is balconies. I think basically every unit above ground level has one, even if it's shallow, a space (1) to hang your laundry outside and (2) so someone can install and maintain your heat pump compressor without risk of death or needing special safety equipment.
I haven't been looking up much, distracted by traffic and shops, or blocked by covered walkways, but today I did look up (starting from a park.) Album. And no, balconies are not ubiquitous here, and compressors are often just extruded from walls, with no obvious access.
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Japan drives on the left, so in streams of people, they tend to walk on the left. Unless they're walking on the right to face oncoming traffic, or are standing on the escalator in Osaka (which for some reason went to the right), or randomly ended up on the right. But mostly they're on the left.
Taiwan drives on the right, so people walk on the right, and after 3 months of doing things the Japanese way, it takes effort to adhere to local custom, and I still find myself going on the left "to be polite."
You might wonder why I just don't fall back to US habits. But the US rarely has pedestrians dense enough to need stream efficiency, outside of some escalators and airport slidewalks. Even where sidewalks are congestion, like in Manhattan, my impression is mostly of interleaved chaos.
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Went to the Taiwan National Museum. I failed my research, I thought it was going to be a big art museum. It's a natural history and anthropology museum. Big hall on Taiwanese butterflies and moths, one on fossils especially rhinos. I went to skim-mode after that: 2nd floor has an indigenous peoples hall, and more fossils + geology. 3rd floor is "Discovering Taiwan", the history of local natural history studies, with a lot of Japanese role there. Basement is children's section, which might have stuff worth checking out; also has the normal toilets, vs. the squat toilets above.
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Train back to Taipei Main, wandered and browsed shops.
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When I lived in Osaka in 2019, my minisplit had a dehumidifier mode that puzzled me. Later research suggested it's supposed to dehumidify the air (duh) with minimal effect on temperature. What is actually did was function as a super-duper air conditioner mode: despite being fairly quiet, it would quickly push the temperature lower than my remote control allowed me to specify. It also seemed to help dry my clothes.
This time around, I was more interested in the heating function of minisplits, but here in Taiwan I've been using the A/C again... and the dehumidifier mode. And it behaves the exact same way. After not that long, my room has gone from 20 to 15 C in temperature, and 80% to 55% RH, or dew point from 16 C to 6 C.
I decided it was time to leave my walkable radius. Took train to Taipei Main, as that seemed quick and promising. Main is rather large and confusing but I eventually made it to the surface. Walking south a bit took me to 228 Peace Park; the '228' refers to something in Taiwanese history that I should look up. Park includes the National Museum, which is said to be really good and is cheap (NT$ 30, basically US$1) but I need to get up earlier for it. Park was nice. Album! ( Read more... )
I made the previous, grumbling, entry this morning. I could have mentioned that despite various noises, I got passable sleep 2 nights in a row, but didn't think of it.
This afternoon I got out, and had a pleasant time, perhaps because I mostly avoided traffic. ( Read more... )
In the US, small apartments are divided between '1BR' (one bedroom, separated from anything else especially the kitchen) and 'studios' (one big room, apart from the bathroom; fridge noise and cooking grease can waft to your bed.) Japan has finer grain: '1R' (studio), '1K' (door between bedroom and kitchen; kitchen is probably a kitchenette in the entranceway; you take food to your bedroom or eat standing), '1DK' (the kitchen area is big enough for a dining table), '1LDK' (I suspect blurry boundaries, but notionally an even bigger common area -- room for a couch? -- and maybe a counter walling off the kitchen.) I had the impulse to classify my housing. No promises of this being interesting to anyone but me.
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