Shopping street near Oyama station

It’s a very, very beautiful day today with a very clear sky.

It’s also very, very hot with very high humidity. It’s comfortable at home with the air conditioner, but going outside means being hit in the face with a heatwave. Same thing as when you’re walking on the street and a huge bus goes past you and the hot air exhaust from the air conditioner hits you in the face. Except the bus stays there until you go back inside.

If you know me, then most likely you’ve heard me talk about this car before. The Lotus Elise is in my opinion the most awesome car ever: minimalist interior and just the bare minimum of driving assists to make this car the most fun to drive in the world, at 1/4 of what you would expect to pay for an equivalent Porsche or Lamborghini.

As you may know, the new Elise S version was released last month. Next weekend there’s a presentation event in Daikanyama. These are the details:

２０１２年８月３日〜４日（朝１０時〜夕方１９時）
代官山T-SITE
東京都渋谷区猿楽町１７−５

The same thing, in English:

August 3rd and 4th, from 10am to 7pm
Daikanyama T-Site
17-5 Sarugakucho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo

I will be there on Saturday 4th from around 10:30am. If you’re coming too, just send me a message!

No, silly woman! You will not get a melanoma in the 5-minute walk from the station to your home!

Many Japanese women use umbrellas on sunny days to protect their skin from the Sun. They actually prefer their skin to be as white as possible (deathbed-white).

This woman takes it a bit too far. She opens her umbrella on a very cloudy day, for a 5-minute walk from the station, at almost 6pm in the afternoon.

Don’t tell anyone, but I think we’ve found a vampire!

Remember this post from a few days ago? I got very upset because Facebook keeps messing with its users’ personal information. In this case, they replaced everybody’s email address with a @facebook.com address. That was too much for me and I decided to leave, after removing my personal information from there.

I must admit defeat. I’m sad to say this, but Facebook wins.

My intention was to go through my friends’ profiles, write down the contact information and other data I wanted to keep (mostly birthdays), and then leave.

However, I found that I couldn’t get any contact information for most of my friends, because almost nobody has changed back to their real email address. Nice lock-in there, Facebook.

Also, during these days I’ve kept receiving friend requests from people I know in real life, messages from my family (even though I told them to email me instead), event invitations, etc. I admit it: it’s difficult to leave Facebook. So that’s it, I admit that I suck

As a damage control measure, I’m removing as much personal information from there as I can, but I’ll stay.

Do you want our own, personalized email address? You’re going to need two things:

Once you have these then you can proceed to create your own email address (or addresses).

See after the break for all the details.

I live within walking distance to the Arakawa River in the northern border of Tokyo. The river acts as the border between the Tokyo metropolis and the Saitama prefecture. As in other parks and natural spaces in the city, there are always people jogging, cycling, praticing baseball, and even water skying! The well-known Sumida River branches from the Arakawa not far from where I live. It flows into Tokyo Bay near the Kasai-Rinkai Park next to Tokyo Disneyland.

I took these last year, during a walk a beautiful summer afternoon.

The photos are after the break.

Look at this video. This is how typical anti-nuclear protesters in Japan react when you try and talk to them.

So violent. How do you reason with someone like this? This is why you hear so much from anti-nuclear protesters, but you don’t hear from us pro-nuclear: anti-nuclear are many, irrational, violent and (most of them) don’t understand what they’re talking about. Because of this, pro-nuclear people feel threatened and prefer not to say anything.

Most of the song is insults, threats and yakuza-speak, but he also manages to drop a nice amount of lies (maybe just because he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about).

Let me clarify a few of them:

With technologies like solar power and other renewables, we can get all the electricity we need without nuclear power… and cheaply, too.

No. This has been discussed again and again in many places. Most of these aren’t economically viable, or just won’t work in a country like Japan that doesn’t have the resources. But hey, maybe I’m mistaken. Show me real data that proves that we can depend on the renewables, and I will happily agree with you.

More after the break.

Yesterday there was a blackout at home while I was at work. It lasted about two minutes, and I learnt about it because one of my monitoring systems at home sent me a notification saying that two of my servers had rebooted.

You know, I’m not used to blackouts because this is the first one in the 10 years I’ve been living in Japan. Usually I wouldn’t really care about the power going offline for a few moments, especially when I’m not home. However, I’m sharing my room with two little ferrets. They don’t stand the hot weather very well, so I keep the air conditioner on during the whole summer for them. Yes, 24×7. And yes, it’s expensive. When I came home yesterday I found the air conditioner turned off because of the blackout, and the room temperature was very high. Nothing happened to my ferrets this time, but it could have.

Read on for my opinions about all this anti-nuclear movement.

Hakone is a mountainous area about 100km south-west of Tokyo. It is a very popular touristic destination because of its many onsen, beautiful scenery and its proximity to Tokyo. You can get there easily by train (JR East or Odakyu).

Hakone is one of my favorite places around Tokyo. I visit there from time to time, but I like it especially in winter. One of the best experiences you can have is being at a rotenburo (an open-air hot spring bath) while it’s raining or even snowing

More after the break.

Yokohama – Japan’s First Port City

In 1859, the Edo period came to a close and Japan opened itself up for foreign trade.  It chose the tiny fishing village of Yokohama to be its main port city.  Yokohama grew from a population of 600 to become what it is today – Japan’s second largest city.  It’s a beautiful city with its mix of architectural styles, spacious feeling, and internationalism.

More after the break.