Ippoippo

Well, it’s started here.
The train today was full of people coughing, spluttering, and sniffing their noses, eyes bright red. I was one of the dammit, having caught a nasty little cold bug. Don’t feel bad as such, just my nose is runny, and feeling really irritable. My eyes are all sore too.
Thank goodness I stocked up on Lemsip, Beechams, Flu Plus tablets etc when I was in the UK in August. The Japanese flu/cold drugs here don’t seem to be particulary stong.

The one thing about Japan, which seems like a good thing at first, is actually not so good. The Japanese are obssessed with cleanliness. Great you may say. I mean the only time they seem to forget about it, is the horrible public toilets you see sometimes. But the rest of the time, surgically-clean is the order of the day.
But the downside of this, and I can’t prove this, its more of a hunch… is that most Japanese seem to have weaker immune systems. Their bodies are so used to clean environments, that when a flu or cold bug comes along, it wipes everyone out.
If they find a case of human-transmissable version of Bird Flu in Japan, it’s going to hit the country bad. I for one, will stop travelling on the damn train if that happens.

On Saturday, Yuko and myself headed over to Akihabara, to check out the new Yodobashi Camera store there.

Seems like we aren’t the only people.

It was pretty packed when we got there, a lot busier than I’ve ever seen at the Yodobashi in Shinjuku.

Yuko and I have been wanted a new printer for a little while, something that can do photographs as well. Turned out that Canon have gone and just released a rather nice new toy, called the MP950. This little beauty is 9600×2400dpi, can print CD/DVD covers, but also includes a 3200dpi scanner, and a 35 film negative scanner!
The last feature is great for me, because I have a whole bunch of photo’s that I want to scan again with a nice negative scanner instead.
The 3200dpi scanner will be pretty useful to, because Yuko and I will have some wedding photo’s we want to get copies of.

The wedding photographer is making a whole series of ’snaps’ available on CD (which I’ll be free to make as many printed copies of as I want), but with the ‘posed potrait’ photos, we have to buy the copies from them. They also will not released the negatives (or digital negatives) until 3 years from now. I understand why they are doing it, it’s the only way for them to make money. What we’ve decided to do is get large prints for ourselves, my parents, Yuko’s parents, Yuko’s grandmother, and my grandmother.
BUT, the plan now is I also scan the pictures, and print off some smaller prints from the scan, to distribute to other family members and frieds as required. Sneaky ehh?

The great thing about living in Japan though, is that we sometimes get our hands on all the latest gadgets before anyone else (though it’s pretty expensive). Looking at the Canon UK site, looks like the MP950 hasn’t been released yet. Mind you, the MP800 is still a nice looking bit of kit.

Today is Halloween, and Japan (as it likes to do), has well and truely adopted this Western tradition. Naturally, they’ve adopted the American-ised version of it, rather than European version.

The American version, and the Japanese version, seems very ‘fancy dress’ orientated, and pretty much an execuse for a party. Back in Europe, well the UK anyway, we seem to have maintained a slightly more pagan feel to it. There’s seems to be more of a fascination with the darker aspects of the festival (which is why I guess the Christian church doesn’t like it too much).

What has made me laugh, is the comments coming out Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Personally, I can’t quite see where he is coming from on this one, but knowing Bush, it will provide him with an excuse to invade Venezuela

Looks like they are slowly adding more detail to the Google Earth set of maps.

Following on from my first post of this, I noticed today that you can now see where I live. It’s still not quite as detailed as the the area where fellow blogger Bogue lives, but it’s not bad. Its a very recent picture, because it’s got the new apartment block in it, which was only completed sometime this year. Its opposite the park (read, square patch of dark dirt, with a couple of tree’s around the outside), near my place.

If you really must know where about I am, type “35 47 12.50 N 139 54 26.52 E” into the search bar of the Google Earth User Interface.

“35 47 58.83 N 139 54 07.79 E” is my local Ito Yokado supermarket, which has a great restaurant (friendly place, great staff) on the roof.

“35 47 04.76 N 139 54 08.84 E” is where there is a nice little Izakya, which never gets that busy, except for a couple of regular businessmen.