son of soy » House

Yurt doorway, Tsutsuji-so

Rick — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:52:20 +0000

The caretaker advised us to leave our shoes *inside* the yurt, not outside, where tanuki (raccoon dogs) might steal them. Why would a tanuki want shoes?

“Pao” interior at Tsutsuji-so

Rick — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:50:07 +0000

Mari checks out the inside of the “Pao,” or yurt, we stayed in on Naoshima.

Fiber!

Rick — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:26:51 +0000

A few months back, a friendly, slightly high-strung man from NTT, the phone company, came to our door offering installation of a hikari fiber-optic line. Supported by subsidies from the Japanese government, he explained, NTT could install the new super-fast Internet connection for free, and the monthly cost would be discounted for one-year. Hikari fiber offers a “best effort” speed, he said, of 100 Mbps. A more realistic speed, he admitted, might range from 30 to 50 Mbps. My DSL line, in comparison, was getting about 3 to 5 Mbps. Was the DSL fast enough for web browsing, designing websites, downloading multi-gigabyte episodes of “Lost?” Well, yeah…. but to have 10 to 33 times faster at the same price? Okay! I couldn’t resist the pressure to keep up. Is this not Japan, where, at least according to internet lore, we live in the future? We arranged the installation.

A month and a half later, an NTT technician in white hardhat and blue jumpsuit arrived to make the hook up. Installation was quick enough. The configuration was more confusing… but by the end of the day everything was basically online.

So, is it fast? My tests at speedtest.net typically show between 15 to 25 Mbps downstream and 4 to 10 Mbps upstream. Nowhere near “best effort” speed, but certainly faster than my old connection. Big downloads, like movie trailers, software updates, music — nice and quick. Daily web-surfing, though, doesn’t feel much different than before. Haven’t tried torrents much yet, but I’ve heard that my ISP likes to limit P2P traffic.

Notes:
- My ISP, Plala, had several “security” filters turned on by default. The filters can restrict such things as Skype and torrents. Finding out where to turn off the filters was a little tricky. And are there other filters that they don’t tell us about?
- Connecting to U.S. websites (basically all those that I visit) actually got slower at first, until i realized I needed to enter the DNS server addresses recommended by Plala into my system’s control panel.
- I used to point a domain name to the web server on my home computer using a dynamic DNS service. This doesn’t work anymore, apparently blocked by Plala or the router they provided.

Winter to Spring 3

Rick — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:19:01 +0000

Mari put these flowers in our genkan.
This photo was originally part of this post, and some comments there might apply to it.

Recycling

Rick Elizaga — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:32:25 +0000

So satisfying to hand these old ink cartridges and batteries to the local electronics shop for recycling.

all work and no play

Rick Elizaga — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:41:42 +0000

My computer crashed bad last Friday. When you spend as much time in front of the machine as I do, that’s a big deal. On Monday, Mari called a taxi for us and the Mac, and we took it to a repair shop downtown. They stuck a new logic board in it, and it was ready to come home the next day. Under warranty, all free. Not bad!

From my recent photos, it might look like I’m out all the time, but actually, I’m almost always sitting at my desk. I know you are interested, so here’s an exhaustive catalog:

On top of the desk: tea/coffee pot, mug, Tiger thermos pump pot, grocery store sushi, Ikea lamp, pack of loose-leaf organic green tea, keyboard, JBL satellite speaker, iMac showing top secret website mockup, cotton finger cot (My ingenious solution to the problem of how to keep the little rollerball on my mouse clean. Talk about design flaws: The human finger, prone to greasiness and cell-shedding, has sadly not caught up with technology yet.), printout of (super-secret) logo mockups, wireless Mighty Mouse, USB cable, Wacom drawing tablet inherited from a dead dot-com, pile of papers and unread books.
Beneath the desk: Mari’s djembe drum from her crazy hippie days.

snow totoro

Rick Elizaga — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:20:20 +0000

We were going to join friends in Osaka for a nabe dinner, but the six inches of snow that fell today changed our plans. Instead, we stayed home and made a snow chibi totoro. First snow figure I’ve made since I was in grade school. The eyes are big beans. Thanks to the neighbor girls and their mom for the help!

sunset over neighbors’ roofs

Rick Elizaga — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 06:01:03 +0000

Mari watches the sunset from our upstairs window.
Among the rooftops is the laundry shed for Kokoro no Oshibori, roughly, “Handtowels of the Heart.” If you eat in a restaurant in Kyoto’s Sakyou-ku district, maybe your oshibori, the hot or cold hand towels you get at the table, are washed and dried there. Sometimes we can hear the ka-chunk ka-chunk of the machines late into the night. The company name is actually Tsukasa, but kokoro no oshibori, written on their service vans, always makes me smile.

Looking back:

From the summer memories series: life in Morton, Washington. Dad sits in his favorite chair munching peanuts, watching a History Channel program about tanks on satellite TV. Meanwhile, outside, meat grills on the Weber while a fawn looks on.

lotus, wedding, barong

Rick Elizaga — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:07:26 +0000

I’ve been absent from this blog for weeks at a time. Sorry!
I’m still alive over here. There’s a lot I could write about and a pile of photos I could post. Should I just let them go down the memory hole and move on, or start a series of sub-posts called “summer remembered?”

I didn’t mention it before, but Mari and I are getting married in November! That subject alone — the excitement, logistics, stresses, relationship ups and downs — could fill a whole blog. Marriage is such a huge thing… I’m trying not to be overwhelmed. It seems too big to blog about.

We’ve been engaged for several months, but there’s still plenty of planning to do. Some details:
The ceremony will be in Tokyo at a shinto shrine, Asakasa Hikawa-jinja, attended mainly by family and relatives — about 25-30 guests. Lunch afterwards. The following weekend, a party in Kyoto. Since Tokyo is quite far (and expensive) for most of my friends and relatives in the U.S., we’ll also have a party in the San Francisco Bay Area in spring 2006.

This week I need to finish our invitations for the Japan-side of things.
To complement the red, orange and yellow of November’s autumn leaves and to evoke feelings of spring and new growth, I’m thinking of making the main color a refreshing green?

The save-the-date announcement I designed a couple months back (left) has the look of an old-fashioned movie poster. For the new design I’d like to move towards Muji-like modern elegance.

Mari and I will wear kimonos to the ceremony. But to the lunch and various wedding celebrations in Tokyo, Kyoto and the U.S., I’ll go “back-to-roots” style and wear a barong tagalog, the traditional Filipino men’s formal garment. Usually made from cream-colored translucent pineapple fiber or jusi raw silk and covered in embroidery, barongs are cool and breezy. You wear them like long untucked shirts with black trousers and white undershirt.

My barong, ordered from mybarong.com, arrived yesterday. I ordered ready-to-wear instead of custom-tailored. It fits well, but the neck is a little tight for me — maybe I can move the top button a bit…
It seems ironic that, while I chose to wear a barong because it’s specificially Filipino, this particular one was “Made in China.” Fine, no problem, so was my great grandfather. Filipinos are all a little mixed.

in my solitude, friendly neighbors

Rick Elizaga — Mon, 16 May 2005 06:50:54 +0000

Mari is away for three weeks visiting her mom in Saitama, north of Tokyo. Two things keep me here in Kyoto: my DSL lifeline (for work) and my pet allergies. Over the next few months, Mari will need to be in Saitama a lot, so we’ve been talking about setting up a broadband connection and a dander-free cleanroom for me up there. For the next few weeks, though, I’m out here on my own.

The other day, after my neighbors Carlos and Reme found out that Mari’s gone, Reme surprised me with a delicious lunch delivered to my doorstep: bean and vegetable stew (with the biggest beans I’d ever seen), bechamel/ham croquettes, rice, and a banana. It was a touching treat, a welcome change from the rice and miso soup I’d been eating for the previous two days. Such a thoughtful gesture from next door, and how lucky I am!

While I miss Mari, I’m also enjoying my temporary solitude. I have a bunch of projects I need to focus on, and I can do my own thing for awhile. I can stay up late watching sci-fi and horror movies, read an ActionScript manual in bed, hog all of the blankets, sleep in until 11 — go wild. Actually, I’m a little proud of myself for keeping the house together. I’m still vacuuming, doing the dishes, showering, doing laundry, eating my vegetables. This afternoon, I remembered Mari’s advice to pick leaves from the garden and make a salad. It would have been nicer to share the bowl with her, but this way I can tell her about it on the phone and in the blog.