This site and some quick comments on today.

Wow! I've been doing a great job of meeting or exceeding my goals for this site. It's easy now that I'm between semesters and I'm finding new things to say, but I'm afraid it might slip once I get back in school and get into a routine. Anyways, I've been doing better with shorter posts, so here's one more.

Today I walked to Hard Off in Mitaka. Hard Off is a great used electronics store and hopefully on a slow weekend I'll write more of it, but it's my favorite used electronics store. I found better prices for cameras at Fujiya camera (where I bought mine), but Hard Off has an amazing "Junk" section.

The Hard Off in Mitaka is about 2 miles from my house, so a walk there and back with a friend makes for a nice afternoon and some good exercise.

On the way there, I saw this:

I don't usually post Engrish pictures here, but this one stopped me in my tracks. Here's one of the many banners below this building under construction.

Wow. The ironic thing is the building in progress seemed to be entirely concrete and drywall. Oh well.

Another thing that I saw that pleased me was this job application sign.

It was written in both Japanese and English and while the sign clearly stated you needed to be able to communicate in Japanese (and said 'experiments' instead of 'experience'), it showed that they were open to hiring foreigners. I have no desire to work in a restaurant, but if I did and I owned a bike, I would be sure to apply. I wonder if it was because of the proximity to ICU, an international school only a mile or so from this restaurant. Whatever the reason, the attitude of this establishment made me pleased.

Another unrelated note is my laptop screen hinge seems to be dying. It was not working right today so I super-glued it, and surprisingly it worked! I know it's only a temporary solution, but this computer, after over 2 and a half years of daily use, is showing it's age. When I get a REAL job, I'll probably invest in a new one.