anoisette

I haven’t lived in the same place longer than 9 months since 2002. I’m so over packing and moving. So over it. I basically live my life trying as hard as possible to accumulate as little stuff as possible, so I have as little stuff as possible to pack when it inevitably comes time to do so. And actually, living that way also makes a person a little more frugal, because when I buy something, I buy it knowing that I will have to either throw it out or pack it and move it at some point in the not so distant future.

And yet I find myself wondering where all this crap I have to pack now has materialized from. I have too much stuff! I thought I was doing a good job at not buying too too much stuff (and believe me, it’s hard to do in Japan, the land of cool stuff to buy that you must buy now because you will never find it back home), and yet… Sigh.

As much as I hate moving, I have to admit it’s a good way to force oneself to cull and cull and cull again all their possessions and realize how much crap they own.

Today I treated myself to a shojin ryori lunch at Izusen in Kyoto, and while a bit pricey at ¥4200, I have to say that it’s probably the best meal I’ve had in Japan. The food was so so so delicious. I really love good vegetarian food that uses ingredients creatively to make interesting and tasty dishes. I had the teppatsu ryori set, which was served in special lacquerware bowls that are meant to fit neatly inside of each other as they are emptied.

The restaurant is located in the Daitokuji Temple complex, which was lovely to wander through and have a peek at the gardens.

Bento.com has some information about Izusen, as well as another location next to Kyoto station that I wish I’d known about sooner.

There are lots of pictures of food served there on flickr. I only snagged a shot of the outside because… I was too busy eating my food to take pictures of it…

I was so determined to work at getting a photoblog running the other day that I even put off watching the latest episode of Hanazakari no Kimitachi e. It’s a japanese drama that I’m totally hooked on, even though the story is quite ridiculous. In fact, it’s probably because the story is so ridiculous that I like the show. It’s impossible to take seriously, and I guess that’s what makes it fun to watch. The show’s tagline is Ikemen Paradise which means something like hottie paradise. Yup. Ha. More info (in english) on the show can be found here.

One of the things I really like about the show though is the videography. They seem to use a wide angle lens, which gives a different kind of feeling from what I’m used to seeing in TV shows. I don’t know why, but I just love the look of the wide angle shots and the really saturated colors. I find those are the kind of pictures I like to take as well, wide angle and saturated colors. Kind of makes me wonder if that ’style’ is ‘in’ right now. Do videography and photography go through different trends, kind of like fashion?

The other day I spent the day putting together a photoblog. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since… oh… 2004? Maybe earlier? I actually got really frustrated trying to decide what platform to use that I almost didn’t end up doing it at all, but I decided it doesn’t have to be perfect, just functional.

Even though wordpress isn’t meant for photoblogs, I found a plugin that I thought was great that makes it easier to use wordpress as a photoblog. I really liked yapb, and I wanted to use it but it still required me to make my own template, and that’s something I’ve been trying to do for a few weeks with no success.

Then I thought about using pixelpost, and even went as far as installing it on my server. But then I just decided I would feel much better using wordpress because it’s so flexible, I’ve got a good idea how it works and I know it can do what I want it to, and it’s got such a large community that it’s pretty easy to find answers to questions and so on.

Although why isn’t it easy to find a good photoblog theme? I don’t know. I ended up going with Grain, which has tons of neat little features built into it, and I really like it, the only thing is I really wanted a lighter colored theme, I find Grain too dark. Originally I tried to modify it, but I guess I just got overzealous and it ended up being too much. Oh well, I still might. I should, in fact. But for now at least I have a place to post photos and that was my main goal. Let’s hope I can keep at it. I really should, considering I just bought another new lens for my camera. I don’t feel like I deserve it, but I can’t help it because it’s so much cheaper here in Japan than it would be to buy it back in Canada.

Anyway, while scouring the web high and low for a nice wordpress photoblog theme, I came across this list of the Top Ten Best Photoblog Themes and Templates. Lots of nice themes there, but nothing that was exactly what I was looking for. I’m too picky, I know.

I’ve been looking at buying a suitcase for my trip home. The thing with shopping for luggage is that the price range/quality is so great. I mean, you can buy a $10 suitcase, or a $300. That’s a pretty big spread. So how’s a girl to know how much she should spend? In the past, I’ve usually just bought cheap luggage because I figure I use it a couple of times a year so it doesn’t need to be super sturdy. But now I’m finding that the cheap luggage’s cheapness is showing through the wear. So I’ve been thinking of spending a little more money, and like anything I spend money on, I gotta do some research. I found this helpful article, What sort of bag should you buy?, about carry on luggage because I’m thinking of getting a carry on suitcase. I think it would suit my needs well, I’ve got to take a laptop and DSLR home and obviously that can’t go in a checked suitcase and if I have them in their own respective bags, that eats up all my carry on baggage allowance right there. Plus I’m thinking I’ll spend a week or so in December going around Austria, and maybe Germany, and maybe something small with wheels would be nice.

I went and looked at some luggage this afternoon at Loft. I still find it hard to tell the difference between a $100 suitcase and a $200 one. Will have to keep looking. Google search pointed me to an apparent discount store nearby in Sannomiya that I was not aware of, I’m going to have to check out this DonkiKingdom place.

Yesterday I cooked this strange looking vegetable. It’s called goya and it’s a Japanese vegetable from Okinawa. I’d seen it at the grocery store and wondered what it was, and how it was prepared. To my surprise and delight, I found it in a dish in the set meal I had at Mikoan in Kyoto, and also to my surprise I discovered it’s got something of an acquired taste (it’s quite bitter). But I didn’t let that put me off, and when I found this vegetarian recipe for goya champuru, I decided to try cooking it. I guess the bitterness has to be countered by some sweetness and eating it with rice definitely helps. It was fun to take pictures of though.

Ever since my trip to Australia, I’ve been really conscious of the dust on the sensor of my digital camera. Although until I read this DSLR cleaning page, to me it was dust somewhere inside my camera, but now thanks to the guide I know it’s on the sensor.

Today I went into Osaka to go to Yodobashi (I seriously love that store and really I could find what I need here in Kobe, but I just like going there), to buy a bulb blower and to my great joy, I actually ended up being able to pay with it with points, and I found out that I have like 2000 worth of points to use still. Which may not seem like a lot but whatever, that’s like $20 worth of free stuff. Woo hoo to that! So the point is, if you’re going to be in Japan for a while, pick one big electronics store (since as far as I can tell they all seem to offer points) for your electronic needs and buy your stuff there and collect and enjoy the points. Although you should still shop around, especially for camera stuff, because the big electronics stores aren’t always the cheapest, and the little camera shops can have pretty good prices. What I usually do is a run a search on kakaku.com for what I’m looking to buy and use the cheapest price as a guideline for ‘good deal’. Then I’ll compare the price at Yodobashi. If it’s a lot more (more than the % I’d get in points which I look at as kind of like a discount) I’ll check the smaller camera shops, like a camera shop in Kobe where I bought my fish-eye lens for a good price or Tokiwa Camera in Osaka’s Den Den Town, which offered me a good price (and great service) on my DSLR.

However, a giant electronics store like Yodobashi is a great place to shop for things like a camera bag, where personal preference plays a big part and a large (and I mean Large!) selection is important.

A while back treehugger posted about a pedal roller coaster in Japan. So I set out to do some internet sleuthing to figure out where it was exactly, and discovered it to be Washuzan Highland Park in Okayama, which isn’t too far from where I am by shinkansen, and I resolved to go because come on! It looked too funny not to! That said, I wouldn’t call it a roller coaster, really more of funny pedal powered carts on a high metal tracks, giving breathtaking views of the sea and the island of Shikoku. But it was still pretty fun.

EDIT I would like to say that getting that video up on youtube was a headache and a half. And for some reason the first part of the video wouldn’t work. I kept uploading the clip to youtube and it kept saying ‘failed’. I have no idea why and it was really aggravating coz the first clip was the best one! So I gave up.Ha, that’s my problem, I just can’t give up when something isn’t working. I gave up on YouTube though. YouTube, you suck. Last night it wasn’t letting me upload, so I decided to just try later, and today it was still giving me grief. So I posted half of what I wanted to originally, because it wouldn’t accept my first clip. Anyway, Jumpcut, you rock. I uploaded everything no fuss no muss. It was super easy for me to put the clips together and publish the video and share it. Great intuitive user interface. And I could even have added music if I wanted to!

My main problem is that my camera records video in Quicktime format (.mov), and most of the time I take lots of shot little clips, which I want to stitch together into one movie to share with friends or post on my site. I’m not all hardcore into making movies or anything, I just don’t want my friends to have to download 3 separate clips when it would be so much easier just to send them one. Unfortunately Windows Movie Maker, which comes with Windows doesn’t support .mov files. I guess if I had a Mac this wouldn’t be a problem, but that’s beside the point. The point is I searched and searched for some easy reliable freeware that would let me string a few clips together and didn’t have much luck. I figured there had to be an easier way, so after digging through YouTube, I saw I could use their ‘remixer’. Well that was crap and a waste of time. Basically, Jumpcut solved my problem and now I’m happy. No need to download software or anything to edit .mov files, just upload them to Jumpcut, play around and then share the video. Easy peasy. /EDIT

After hearing that there was a hair salon in Sannomiya where the hairdresser spoke english, I googled and googled to try and find a website with a map, to no avail. Finally my friend remembered to bring their card in for me, and there was a website all along! Hair Studio Billy. So I made an appointment and got my hair cut the other day. They did a good job, and it wasn’t too expensive. And there’s a really cute friendly little dog named Billy. Too bad I only found out about them now that I’m leaving.

Considering how much I’ve harped about packing light and only packing necessities, an entry on packing books might seem a little contradictory. So this suggestion might not work for everyone, but it’s what I did and it worked for me when traveling in South East Asia.

Lazing around on beaches or in hammocks in tropical destinations might sound all well and nice, but the fact is after a day or two, it can get a bit boring. Especially when you’re on some little island with rather little in the way of downtime entertainment (notice the downtime, we all need downtime after a day of swimming/snorkeling/hiking/exploring what have you). No TVs (ok there might be one or two in a restaurant or guest house common area but chances are even so the options of what to watch are pretty limited), and internet is prohibitively expensive and slow because it’s satellite access on old laptops. That’s right about when you may think having a book to read would be nice… So you wander over to the little general store only to find out that the price of that new bestseller book is equivalent to twice what you’re paying for one night’s accommodations. Read the rest of this entry »