lingqi's Journal: September 16, 2003

September 16th, 2003 (22:42pm)

Ok, I have been neglecting this journal for wayyyy too long. Being busy is part of the reason, but I think I am mostly to blame.

updates:

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I was wrong about the phone. You do get the old one back... It just take a few extra days... Now that I have gotten the address book etc out of it, I have a phone sitting around and am beginning to wonder what greater purpose it may serve. LCD for computer case modding project? battery + charger? portable simplistic PDA?

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A few days ago it was said on the news that a farmer got 690kg of his rice stolen, which was worth about 200,000 yen. Nothing against the intelligence or the motives of the said thief - but that's almost exactly like stealing bags of pennies. I bet the money he/she/they made off these rice does not cover the chiropractor bills that would inexorabbly come...

Maybe they were really hungry...

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I discovered a recycle-shop (technically, a chain of recycle shops) recently off route 125. I now spend a good portion of each day kicking myself for not having checked it out earlier... They have pretty much everything one would need to furnish a home at big discounts, including the washer/dryer combo thing that I am now very sure I have overpaid for...

Off-House, I think it was called...

One thing worthy of note is that they had a RC hellicopter for 45,000 yen... (gas engine) highly. tempting.

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Bashamichi, the "meiji-era pasta restaurant," is not all it seems...

For the second time within a two week span have I walked into a restaurant, only to be greeted by napkins / glasses with bashamichi logos (whereby the said restaurants themselves seems to have nothing in relation to "meiji-era pasta.")

It seems that bashamichi is a conglomerate restaurant group in this area - I wish they labeled those restaurants, though... Even though they have completely charming and unique decor, the food are actually almost exactly the same...

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Across from one such restaurant, tokuju-an, is a k-mart esq shopping center (this is downtown gyoda).

I say K-mart like because it seems that unlike the big department stores which is all fancy and glittery and has overpriced name-brand stuff, this one actually had a lot of made-in-china clothes and such that are incredibly cheap, some T-shirts going for 190 yen - which is even cheaper than most places in China...

Besides the k-mart-ness, nothing particularly interesting in the shopping center. Well, that and i was able to find those insanely long school-girl socks on sale. They go by length - the longest is 1.1 meters!

definitely multi-purpose... strangling, escape from bedroom, preform various acts of bondage, wrapping for "small feet" (ancient chinese style), to name a few...

1,500 yen for a pair, though...

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Ueno...

I have finally took my time to explore Ueno in search of the phone-card selling places... I found exactly... ONE. I did, however, come across a lot of other interesting things.

I should make note that in earlier years (oh the good old times gone past), one can buy over-charged pay-phone cards (over-charged as in >105 units) that can basically give you nearly unlimited calls to anywhere - once you are done, you just buy another one for incredibbly cheap or re-write the magnetic code yourself... these days such business seem to have declined to nothing, though...

Ueno has (actually I heard other places has these too, but so far I have only seen them in Ueno) these discount-shops for tickets and such: mostly plane tickets, highway cards, concert / movie tickets, phone cards (not THAT much of a discount), shinkansen tickets, and beer tickets...

--- ack 11pm!... will explain about them beer tickets tomorrow, I guess ---

socks

[heliocentric]

They go by length - the longest is 1.1 meters!

I want to meet the kind of girl who wears those!

Second hand

[mad flyer]

Also check for the "Hard Off" shops. They sell electronics second hands goods (a lot of them here near Nagoya).
It's written in yellow on a not so dark blue background.
It's impressive, they have everything including spare parts and power supplies.

/.ers north of Tokyo

[Mammothrept]

Just out of curiousity, do you know if there are other many slashdotters in between Tokyo and Kumagaya? I'm in Tokyo but go up that way every once in awhile.

Re:/.ers north of Tokyo

[lingqi]

not quite sure about slashdotters, but for a tucked away place like northern saitama / southern gunma, I see tons more foreigners than I have expected (still amazes me how many foreigners passes through kumagaya station).

Then again, oota has globs of brazillians and such (workers, or decendents of workers for fuji heavy industries etc).