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Jan. 2nd, 2021 12:41 pmMany of the places I liked in Japan are still open and doing okay. The lack of tourism is hitting everything, and some places did close. Meanwhile the places that sell mostly to locals seem to be faring better. Such as the doujinshi and eroge shops, avoided by most tourists that don't have power levels as high as mine, or the electronics parts stalls in Radio Center, or the camera shops in Shinjuku that may as well be museums. Those places are doing okay and I liked those more than the touristy ones anyway.
I really want to see a Pepper Lunch or GoGoCurry open up around here. Well, relatively around here. I don't expect one to in this middle-of-nowhere. DC or Baltimore would be reasonable enough for me, since those are in my regular geographic range. They have locations in NYC but that's not in my regular range. Going to NYC now with current events is ill-advised. Oh well, they've reached the US so it's a good start. Someday!
On the flip side, the Carl's Jr. that opened up in Akihabara is almost identical to the Carl's/Hardee's we have here in the US. The only differences being the menus are in both English and Japanese, and I'm not likely to get food poisoning.
Anecdote: One time back in 1997 or so, my friend Eric and I were coming home from an anime club meeting, we stopped at a Hardee's that turned out to be in bad shape, and he said "the department of health needs to shut this place down". A couple weeks later we went by again and that's exactly what happened. In fact the building itself was torn down a couple months later. The only reason we went to that one at all and learned of its fate was because it was in the same shopping center as a Tower Records. Which, much like all of the US locations, then closed in 2006. But the ones in Japan are still going, bigger and better than ever.
Christmas present to me: An HO-scale ES44AC locomotive in Chessie paint. What makes this unique is while it's a modern locomotive, the Chessie paint scheme hasn't been used since the early 80s when it became CSX. It's part of Athearn's "Legendary Liveries" line, where they apply vintage designs to modern locomotives in a "what if" sense.
Another Christmas present: Induction torch. It works by using electromagnetism to heat up nuts and bolts and other ferrous metal, and focusing all of the heat in one spot. As opposed to using a propane/MAPP torch that uses actual fire that may or may not go where it's not supposed to. This will be handy because on cars that are as old as mine, repairs tend to get a bit more complex. Sure, repair manuals and online advice may say "remove these nuts and bolts and this part will come right off" but at some point the nuts and bolts themselves will be too rusty to play nice and just be all "NOOOO I DON'T WANNA AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME" and the only way forward is to quite literally light a fire under its ass. Or saw it off.
See, I think I figured out why Hondas (and many Japanese cars for that matter) tend to have rusty fasteners and rusty parts. On less reliable cars, there are parts that need replaced more frequently, so the affected nuts and bolts end up getting some kind of activity and rust isn't given the chance to really take root. Or the cars themselves just don't last long enough for that to happen. Meanwhile, on a Honda, the same part would last for 15, 20, 25 years, and the fasteners haven't been touched so they rust and corrode so much they no longer resemble their original form. There's also something to be said about how cars in Japan weren't meant to be on the road for that long but instead are designed to live their more-limited time flawlessly, and this equated to much longer lifespans here in the US.
Nozomi told me she needed a new gas cap. Literally. At some point, Honda implemented a way of detecting failing gas caps separate from a typical check-engine light by having the message "check gas cap" appear where the odometer reading would be. I put a new cap on and that cleared it up.
I should probably get a more powerful OBD2 reader. The one I've had since 2005 works, in a basic sense. It can read codes, it can clear them, but that's it. And only when the car isn't running, so it can't read live data.
Playing some 90s music (Sundays, Suddenly Tammy, Lisa Loeb, etc) in the background while using Google Maps to retrace trips to old anime conventions that I haven't been to in years and other long-gone places gives me some moody feels. It's like, I know I can't go back, but if I try and imagine, maybe I can pretend. Is it too early for me to be putting on the nostalgia goggles?
Sometimes I think about all the opportunities that have slipped away from me, big and small, either quietly or with much ado, and it leaves me feeling a bit melancholy. I take some solace in knowing that choosing one opportunity means letting another go. Sometimes the trade-off is worth it, sometimes it's not. I've come to accept that. I know if I had done everything differently and taken a wildly different path, I'd still be wondering about all the "what-ifs". That's no way to go through life, though.
I really want to see a Pepper Lunch or GoGoCurry open up around here. Well, relatively around here. I don't expect one to in this middle-of-nowhere. DC or Baltimore would be reasonable enough for me, since those are in my regular geographic range. They have locations in NYC but that's not in my regular range. Going to NYC now with current events is ill-advised. Oh well, they've reached the US so it's a good start. Someday!
On the flip side, the Carl's Jr. that opened up in Akihabara is almost identical to the Carl's/Hardee's we have here in the US. The only differences being the menus are in both English and Japanese, and I'm not likely to get food poisoning.
Anecdote: One time back in 1997 or so, my friend Eric and I were coming home from an anime club meeting, we stopped at a Hardee's that turned out to be in bad shape, and he said "the department of health needs to shut this place down". A couple weeks later we went by again and that's exactly what happened. In fact the building itself was torn down a couple months later. The only reason we went to that one at all and learned of its fate was because it was in the same shopping center as a Tower Records. Which, much like all of the US locations, then closed in 2006. But the ones in Japan are still going, bigger and better than ever.
Christmas present to me: An HO-scale ES44AC locomotive in Chessie paint. What makes this unique is while it's a modern locomotive, the Chessie paint scheme hasn't been used since the early 80s when it became CSX. It's part of Athearn's "Legendary Liveries" line, where they apply vintage designs to modern locomotives in a "what if" sense.
Another Christmas present: Induction torch. It works by using electromagnetism to heat up nuts and bolts and other ferrous metal, and focusing all of the heat in one spot. As opposed to using a propane/MAPP torch that uses actual fire that may or may not go where it's not supposed to. This will be handy because on cars that are as old as mine, repairs tend to get a bit more complex. Sure, repair manuals and online advice may say "remove these nuts and bolts and this part will come right off" but at some point the nuts and bolts themselves will be too rusty to play nice and just be all "NOOOO I DON'T WANNA AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME" and the only way forward is to quite literally light a fire under its ass. Or saw it off.
See, I think I figured out why Hondas (and many Japanese cars for that matter) tend to have rusty fasteners and rusty parts. On less reliable cars, there are parts that need replaced more frequently, so the affected nuts and bolts end up getting some kind of activity and rust isn't given the chance to really take root. Or the cars themselves just don't last long enough for that to happen. Meanwhile, on a Honda, the same part would last for 15, 20, 25 years, and the fasteners haven't been touched so they rust and corrode so much they no longer resemble their original form. There's also something to be said about how cars in Japan weren't meant to be on the road for that long but instead are designed to live their more-limited time flawlessly, and this equated to much longer lifespans here in the US.
Nozomi told me she needed a new gas cap. Literally. At some point, Honda implemented a way of detecting failing gas caps separate from a typical check-engine light by having the message "check gas cap" appear where the odometer reading would be. I put a new cap on and that cleared it up.
I should probably get a more powerful OBD2 reader. The one I've had since 2005 works, in a basic sense. It can read codes, it can clear them, but that's it. And only when the car isn't running, so it can't read live data.
Playing some 90s music (Sundays, Suddenly Tammy, Lisa Loeb, etc) in the background while using Google Maps to retrace trips to old anime conventions that I haven't been to in years and other long-gone places gives me some moody feels. It's like, I know I can't go back, but if I try and imagine, maybe I can pretend. Is it too early for me to be putting on the nostalgia goggles?
Sometimes I think about all the opportunities that have slipped away from me, big and small, either quietly or with much ado, and it leaves me feeling a bit melancholy. I take some solace in knowing that choosing one opportunity means letting another go. Sometimes the trade-off is worth it, sometimes it's not. I've come to accept that. I know if I had done everything differently and taken a wildly different path, I'd still be wondering about all the "what-ifs". That's no way to go through life, though.
