While wandering around Shirokiya’s yatai-mura, I happened across Akimune-an’s taiyaki stall. I guess they didn’t shut down as I thought, but had just been relocated to the second floor. My unfavorite Micronesian worker had a cold as evidenced by a mask, but she was holding the mask to her face with one hand. Great. I hope that hand gets washed before it touches food or food making apparatus! I’m sure that’s wishful thinking.
Nagoya’s Jiraya is back at Shirokiya, this time all the way at the back of the yatai-mura food court. I gave their takana tenmusu this time. The salted, pickled takana adds a nice flavor to the rice. I prefer this over the regular tenmusu. It adds a buck or so to the price, but I think it’s worth it.
Recommended
Three-and-a-half out of four musu-monkeys
$8.89 USD with sales tax
One of the things I visually really didn’t like on my FR-S were the rims. The five paired shiney spokes just didn’t do it for me. A pretty popular thing to do that I’d seen someone at McB do to his tC was to paint the rims with Plastidip. Plastidip is a synthetic rubber coating, possibly known more from olden times as tool handle dip. It’s also in an aerosol form as used here. The only bummer is you can only find black, red, sometimes blue, and maybe clear locally. Too bad because they have a bunch of other colors, including disco neons, camo tones, metalics, and pearlizer finish. Anyway, the beauty of this stuff is that it is non-permanent. Get tired of it, you can peel it of. As a consequence, it’ll eventually peel on its own. We shall see how long it lasts. I only did two major coats on the front side, more is recommended. Continue reading ‘Plastidip’
So in the wide eyes of my co-worker’s young son, does Dad go to work with Asian James Bond?
My co-worker today told me how he brought his son by work one day and they saw my new car. Kids will notice little things, and at the time I hadn’t cut and fit in the trim plate so the PTunning tow hook mount in the front bumper was much more pronounced. Little guy asked Dad, what’s that?
Dad said as a matter of fact, “oh, it’s a machine gun.”
“You mean like James Bond?”
“Yup!”
I guess next time he comes in I’ll have to say, “hey kid, the name’s Hong, James Hong.” Oh wait, that’s a real persons name!
Hm, so maybe that can be my next year’s Haloween plan? Originally if I had gotten the white I had a perfect plan, I could cosplay Speed Racer! Find some red masking tape to lay out the red M, make or borrow a magnetic circle 5 for the doors.  I already have a white Racer helmet, would need to find a little too tight blue polo shirt, a red scarf, and white jeans. Pretty easy and I’m sure would work great driving around!
Oh well!
I noticed a crack on the front edge of the gas pedals of my 08/09 Burton Doom bindings on the first day of riding this Thanksgiving weekend at Solitude. I figured the plastic was getting old and just ignored it. At the end of the second riding day, the left gas pedal actually fell off when I unstrapped my boot. This was moments after performing a field-expedient repair on Fabio’s binding strap. I kind of jammed it back in in hopes it would stay in place from the toestrap pressure, but by the bottom of the hill, it was gone to parts unknown.  It was the end of the day, my board had taken some major hits, and I was tired, so I didn’t think too much of it. We spun by REI to look for replacement bits on the way home. Fabio found a replacement strap segment, but there were no gas pedals as parts. That ended up being the last riding day of the trip, so I figured I would try to resurrect the bindings with donor parts, or get new bindings when I got home. Continue reading ‘Brittle Bindings’
Chris spun by the Pit on Tuesday after his Saint Louis ride. On the rock drop before the little tree, he unclipped and proceeded to immediately rat-trap himself. Nice!  The picture is pretty grotesque, so it’s after the break. Continue reading ‘We Like Riding Bicycles Why?’
Just got back from a quick jaunt to Waimanalo and back, after first running to Napa to buy a new oil filter socket wrench. I had bought filters and gaskets at Toyota earlier, but I didn’t realize that this filter was yet a different size. I don’t have the universal fit tool Dave has. Anyway hit the magic 1000 miles. Pulled into the garage to get ready to do an oil change. I heard the infamous “crickets”. We shall see what happens after the oil change, but it looks like it’ll be going into Scion/Servco to apply the TSB. With the power of the Internet, technical issues are now quickly widely known among the enthusiasts. The chirping is an acknowledged problem with the very high pressure fuel pump for the DI. There is also a TSB regarding the ECU engine mapping that I might be needing. It manifests as uneven idling, sometimes going as far as causing the engine to die and triggering a check engine light. Mine doesn’t seem to be bad, but I do see an occasional idle dip below normal when clutching in coming to a stop.
Having a brand spaking new car, I’ve been fairly picky about finding parking, but sometimes lots are pretty full without much choice. Last night stopped by Hawaii Kai to pick up something to eat. Figured it was going to be fast so I picked a stall near far end, but not the very end. It was next to a nice BMW so I hopped less risk. Imagine my horror as I was walking back to my car, the BMW was gone, and some guy was attempting to pull into the end stall with some Buick/Chevy Centuryish thing of recent vintage. He was repeatedly bashing against the end curb trying to turn in, car bouncing around as it started to climb up. Thankfully he gave up, maybe because he saw me, and went to find another stall. Shake your head moments, like seeing a VW Beetle with scraped side. Makes you believe that people really do need back-up sensors on a Smart car.
And check out the site yourparkingsux.com for more examples of great parking skillz!
It’s been a year since I got the E36/8 M Coupe. In that year, I’ve put about 7600 miles on it, and the fuel consumption has settled into the 19-20 MPG (8.1-8.5km/l, 12.4-11.8l/100km) range with occasional dips and peaks. The mileage is double what the Land Cruiser gets, but the M requires 91-octane, so the price-per-gallon is a little higher. For all intents and purposes, my fuel bill has been cut in half. Roughly, that 7600 miles works out to around 390 gallons at 19.5 MPG, which means about $1660 for the year with an average price per gallon of around $4.25. Continue reading ‘A Year on the M’
