The JMA forecast calls for a clear morning followed by rain this afternoon. It’s about time for stores to open, so I’ll head out soon, but it’s clear blue out, so I feel a little incredulous about the prediction of rain. This is the JMA though, so I do believe it. Their forecasts run accurate to almost the hour. I’ll take my eVent jacket…
(0)Monthly Archive for October, 2012
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Apples are pretty synonymous with Aomori-ken, and the souveneir hawkers are almost completely invested in apples being the singular omiyage item. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the specific apple item I was looking for – an old-fashioned steel can of apple jam. The apples are generally good, but not all of them are great. Most are grow around the city of Hirosaki, although the first experiments with growing apples were done on the slopes of Hakkoda-san to the South of Aomori City. The apple trees are fairly small and loaded with fruit, like one every 15-20cm. Reflective mylar sheets are placed under the trees to reflect the sunlight and make the undersides of the fruits change color to match the tops. Continue reading ‘Apples and Autumn’
It’s done, a disembodied zombie has bought the AE86. No actually he seems to be a nice guy, even if he does look like a zombie. He actually had a SR5 AE86 that he sold in order to pick this up. Hopefully he learns from Ed, the dude who kind of brokered this deal. Ed is a gear head and knows his stuff, this guy is still a kid and pretty wet behind the ears, but hopefully he will grow with this car. I think it’s awesome that he scraped together the money and I think this car is a great way to get started. He’s not some snot nosed unappreciative punk who’s parents bought him a “fully tuned” Evo or something. Build it to the car of your dreams, zombie boy, enjoy!
So I put up the AE86 “Hachiroku” Corolla up for sale. Put up signs in the window and took it to auto cross on Sunday. Have a taker already, will try meet up tonight, he said he’s got the money and if we can do the sale tomorrow. I drove it for work today and as I was driving it I was almost having twinges of regret! It was certainly fun to drive, the punishing rear suspension not withstanding. I love how the engine winds up and the quick gearing. It’s not fast but it does put a smile on the face. As I think more about it, the dude will be getting a hell of deal considering the work that’s gone into it. Mechanically it’s solid, rebuilt tranny, all new bearings, seals & synchros. Rebuilt rear end, again all new bearings, seals and the KAAZ 1.5 way LSD. All new polyurethane bushings. New front ball joints, tie rod ends. New P/S hoses. Full bling coilover suspension. I did pull the flywheel and clutch. I think I’ll go pull out the micro Momo steering wheel too. Anyway, I’m not going to back out of this, so if he shows me the money, it’s out of here! I sure hope he’s not some yahoo, he’s a friend of one of the auto-x & rally-x dudes who is cool, but you know how friends of friends can be, but once you let it go, gotta let it go!
Washing car saturday night and heard familiar whine of HFD1. It wasn’t totally unusual to hear them at night, but I started to take notice because they were hanging around the area. Sure enough they headed to the Koko crater and lit up a portion of the “stairs”. I had been thinking the other night when this would happen as I watched close to a dozen lights on that trail. Was it sooner rather than later? Hfd1 didn’t hang around that long then cruised over to Koko Head then moved on, so I thought maybe they were just being friendly. Continue reading ‘Good evening HFD1’
Man, my sleep cycle is going to be all messed up. Need some ToughMan! Rode the most painful train seat from Sapporo to Aomori on the overnight train through the Seikan Tunnel. After pounding a between-the-rib-bones-of-a-maguro meat donburi, it was off on a great circuit of the West part of Aomori to Akita and back again. Except for the parts where the satellite reception was lost due to tunnels, I’ve got like 800km on the GPS today! Didn’t get many good pictures because of the speeding train and front lighting, but got to see a nice SL.
(0)Yesterday, the weather forecast for today in Sapporo called for rain in the afternoon, but this morning, it was revised to partially cloudy. I was considering going for a hike, but the gutbag is still a little noisy and unhappy from the flight. I definitely don’t want to be hunting down a un-nasty toilet in an unfamiliar town if the XD rears its brown head, nor do I want to poop in the woods when the bears are about in their final weeks of fattening up for winter. The clouds are ripping by, so the windspeed is pretty high. Temperature is nice though, around 11-13C.
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WTF?!?! I’m reading the ingredients list on my lunch dessert tiramisu and the word “silicone” comes as a bit of a shock. I’ve seen food-grade silicone spray lube for use on industrial food preparation machinery, but this is the first time I’ve seen it listed as an ingredient! According to the internet, the common uses for silicone in food products is as an anti-foaming agent, but I’m not sure how it’s being used in this instance. This probably wouldn’t prevent me from buying this product again, but the use of margarine over butter would.
With plate lunch and burger prices in Hawai’i rising to the $10 USD mark, let’s see what I got for lunch today from the Seicomart convenience store in Japan. Seicomart is one of the few chains that have actual service kitchens in the back of the store, so they produce hot meals instead of only having cold lunches that the register staff can microwave for you. It took me the entire time it took me to eat my entrée to figure out what the heck it was being called because of the katakana on the label. Let’s see… that’s a “he” with a handakuten mark, followed by a little “tsu” and a “ha” with a handakuten mark and a long sound mark… “Pepper-burg don.” It was essentially a deconstructed loco moco. The flavor was really good. There was even a nice little piece of broccoli and a ragout of onions and carrot as a concession to nutritional balance. For 450-yen, equivalent to around $5.75 USD, it was a good value, considering it was between “mini” and full-sized plate lunch in size, but priced less than a mini. Continue reading ‘Cheap Lunch’
My lower back and ass hurt from sitting in worn-out JAL seats all the way across the Pacific yesterday. At least the plane wasn’t stinky like the last time I was on JAL. Can’t wait for Hawaiian to get approval for the direct CTS route. Narita either had the A/C turned off, or had the heaters turned on, because it was hotter than Honolulu International if you can imagine that. Broke a sweat there where I didn’t back home. Some JDM girl in front of me in the domestic check in line cracked a silent fart of death just as I bent down to check the TSA lock on my bag. I actually got a gag reflex and had to drink water to get the gullet peristalsis moving back in the “down” direction.
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