The Playstation 3 is a very powerful machine. So powerful that it needs a lot of electricity to run, and that means it produces lots of heat. It has a very efficient built-in fan to keep it from melting down, but when it gets too hot, the fan starts to run very fast, making a noise something like a small jet taking off.

My PS3 is in a cabinet with a glass door, and I use mostly for watching DVDs. If the door is closed, then the PS3 will overheat in about 30 minutes which makes it hard to hear, but if I leave the door open, then all is cool, except you can now hear the normal fan noise from the PS3. I did not like this state of affairs – for one thing I would forget, and half-way through watching a DVD I would hear this horrible high-pitched roar coming from the cabinet, and I’d have to either ignore it and hope it did not explode, or open the door and listen to it at full volume until it cooled down.

I could move the PS3, but there is really nowhere for it to go in a way that my wife would find aesthetically pleasing, so it’s kind of stuck there. Adding an aftermarket PS3 fan such as the “intercooler” is pointless, since the problem is the air inside the cabinet getting too hot, and having nowhere to go. The PS3 is quite capable of cooling itself, so long as it is “well ventilated”. So I decided what I needed to do was mod the cabinet by adding a cooling fan that would blow in cold air.
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We had heard that you have to take your shoes off a lot in Japan. I even got some slip-on shoes (Clarks Privo, very nice). But actually, excepting the Ryokan, there were not that many places on the stay where we did. Here’s the list:

1) A Japanese restaurant in Kyoto, on the street up to Kiyomizudera, we had to sit on cushions. Delicious food.
2) Nijo castle in Kyoto, where you get to walk on the “nightingale floor” in your socks.

That’s it! Or course in the Ryokan you have to change slippers ever five feet, but if you are not staying at a Ryokan (or someone’s house), then I’d really not worry too much about it. Brad advised us to favor comfort over ease of removing, and I totally agree. Luckily my shoes were both comfortable, and removable, just make sure you break them in. You walk a lot in Japan – even if you taxi everywhere, the temple-type sites are big, so good shoes are a must.

I’m in the airport right now, with about three hours to go before the plane leaves. On the way here I was thinking of some of the odd things that I might simply forget if I left it a few days.

The Japanese seem very organized. At Starbucks in Shibuya there were people working the line, handing out menus in advance, the taking them off you, as they were also on the countertop, then when they took your order, another little line formed, and someone managed the whole line, looking at your reciept, and getting your drink when it was ready and shuffling you off.

Traffic organziation is highly manpower intensive. Every little building or site entrance has at least one person with a red illuminated baton who will stop pedestrians to let out cars or trucks. Sometimes there are several of these, and they rotate to form little corridors to alternately let pedestrains or cars through. Sometimes you see life sized screens with an animated figure of a flag waving man. On the way to the airport I saw an animated wooded figure that was waving a familar red baton back and forth.

ISO 9001 seems a source of pride. Companies hand banners outside their offices or factories, proclaiming “ISO 9001!”

As you depart on a bus, they bow to you.

I forget the rest.

I’m very tall in Japan. The only people taller than me are other gaijin. But nobody ever looks at me oddly. I feel like the tallest person in Tokyo, but I’m only 6’2″.

Taxis seem very expensive. It’s 660 Yen for the the first 2Km, but all our trips seemed around 2000 Yen. The drivers seemed fond of taking obscure back streets.

During the day it seemed hard to get a drink. I’d just want a beer. The best bets would be hotel bars.

Food is generally quite reasonably priced. You can get a very nice lunch for 1000 Yen.

It helps to think to 100 Yen = 1 dollar, even though it’s more like 115. It just makes it easier to visualize how much things cost.

The weather was very variable. It was hot and cold, sunny and rain, all within the last nine days. Today was really hot. Yesterday was freezing.

Cherry blossoms are cool. People take tarpaulins to the park and sit under them. The blossoms start falling almost as soon as they arrive, so you are in a little snowstorm of pink.

The Shinkansen was not very crowded. Nearly empty on the way to Kyoto, and less than half full on the way back.

We should have got a JR pass.

It would have been better if we stayed another two days in Kyoto, and used that as a base to visit other places.

Walking is a good way to get around, but really it’s a bit a waste of time and energy to walk anything over a half mile unless there is something on the way. Get a taxi. Your time is valuable here, and we got too tired too often.

The trip on the bus from Narita Airport to the Hotel is no fun. A taxi would be very expensive, but would at least leave immediately, and not have to go to other hotels first. The train might well be a lot quicker, but I’ve no idea how much fun it would be.

Museums were hot. Like very hot, like they had the heating turned up to 80. This is no fun when you come in from the nice cool outdoors wearing a coat.

The Shibuya area is a lot more fun than the palace/Ginza area. If you want a brief intense Tokyo experience, stay in Shibuya or Shinjuku.

Ginza is boring during the day, much more fun at night. The same can be said for many areas.

Take lots of photos! You will forget half of what happened if you don’t write it down or take photos. Take a photo of everything! We took 1,200 photos, about 1000 of which are not particularly good, but they still help document the day, so when you come to attempt to recall what you did, you have these useful points of reference.

Drat! The Japan trip is now a week away and I’m not really progressed a significant amount.

I have learned that the most important work is word 5, “Sumimasen”, which means the equivalent of “excuse me” and “I am sorry”, and can be used in the sense “Sumimasen, can you tell me where the train station is?”, or “Sumimasen, I’m so clumsy”.

I think I will probably learn far more on the plane, and during the trip, than I have done up to this point.

11. Watashi ni “to me” or “for me”.

Now this bugs me, “Watashi ni” is word 11, but the book really tells you very little about it, and I could not find a single example in the book that actually uses it. “Ni” is a particle meaning the preceding word is the indirect object of the sentence.

Some examples off the internet:
Watashi ni tasukero! – Help me!
Watashi ni doitsu-go ga hanasemasu. – German can be spoken with me.

12. Watashi no – my, mine
That’s more like it, now I can work towards a full translation of “My dog has no nose. How does he smell? Terrible!”. Dog, is “inu“, so would it start “watashi no inu wa (nose) arimasu ka” – probably not

Backing up one’s data is a perennial problem. I’ve been backing things up for a long time, here’s a little history.

My very first backups were actually wetware. I backed up my programs inside my brain. I was able to do this since my first “computer” was a calculator (a Casio FX180P), which only had 38 bytes of memory. So I could not help but memorize my library of software. Restoring the backups was simply a matter of tapping in the program again.

Next came the ZX81. This stored its programs on tape. Now initially I did not have a tape recorder, and the wetware solution proved inadequate, so I resorted to simply leaving the computer switched on. This meant I generally only ever used a program once, after I typed it in, and then it vanished forever a few days later. Not ideal.
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