-
I visited Tochigi Prefecture (Wikipedia) for the first time! While Eri was taking Emma and John to the movies, I took Rowan on a shinkansen to Utsunomiya. My excursions on the Tohoku Line have until now been limited to trips between Ueno and Tokyo but I was getting bored of that and wanted to see what a trip a little further was like. Spoiler alert: you don’t ever really get out of the urban conglomeration of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. It looks like I’d have to go further north for that which would mean a more expensive ticket than the ¥9,000 or so I paid for the round trip.
-
I was hoping that we might be able to get one of the newish light rail trains that run in Utsunomiya (Wikipedia) and we were. Sydney introduced a similar type of street car in 1997 I can report that if you’ve seen one light rail, you’ve basically seen them all.
-
The trips on the shinkansen and the light rail were a bit of a reward for Rowan managing to sit through a haircut at my barber. It was a struggle the entire time but he did his best and was pretty proud of himself after it was all over. I’m hoping this will mean he’ll make less of a fuss the next time I take him.
-
A couple of weeks back, I mentioned once again deciding to spend more time studying Japanese and while I’ve done an all right job maintaining a daily practice, I have also made some time for more programming. Fortunately, I haven’t started yet another new project but have instead gone back to Jeep, my management tool for Janet projects. Will I actually finish it this time? Only time will tell!
-
As part of the aforementioned Japanese study, I’ve started watching the 2024 remake of the Ranma 1/2 anime (Netflix). It doesn’t feel like it’s really helping that much—unsurprisingly for a martial arts series, each episode is filled with combat-related terms you do not need in daily life—but I figure that it can’t be hurting. The main difference in my experience watching the remake and the original back is how exotic the Chinese elements are meant to be for a Japanese audience. When I first saw the show in the early 2000s, I hadn’t lived in Japan and assumed kung fu dojos were as common in Japan as they are in Australia. This is not the case and I now better realise how strange it is meant to be that Ranma knows kung fu.
-
Speaking of memes, Eugenia somehow wasn’t aware of the ‘but it might work for us’ meme which gave me a reason to find a YouTube video showcasing the iconic scene. What a great show.
-
I started watching the 2002 Spider-Man with the kids. It’s a bit more violent than I would prefer (especially for Rowan) but, as great as it is, there’s only so many times I can stand to watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and it was preferable to watching that again. I was a little concerned that Willem Dafoe’s performance might traumatise them but that fortunately does not seem to have been the case. Perhaps this is a case where the ridiculousness of the Green Goblin costume in that film actually helps? I’d like to watch the Spider-Man 2 again after we finish the first one but Doctor Octopus’s costume is a lot more realistic and so I’m hesitant as to whether that’s a good idea.
-
Did you know his name is really William? TIL!
-
I’m not sure what I make of Lorde’s new album, Virgin (Apple Music). Nothing so far has really grabbed me but I’ll give it a few more rotations to see.
