"Back to the Ramparts?"

Or maybe "Full Lifeboat Syndrome"

September 1st, 2008, 20:20
Takao, Hachioji (Tokyo)

There were two parts to this and I've forgotten the first part, but here's the second part. I was in an electronics store in Shinjuku looking at video cameras. Well... I wasn't just looking, I was about to buy one - my first video camera since #4 burned out in 1992. The first uploaded video from it is here:

"Tokyo Perpetual Motion - August 2008"

In any case, at the electronics store, I asked the salesperson (I could have said "salesman" - he was a male biped after all, but... whatever) "how do you change the menu language?", to which he told me that they had disabled that function(!). I looked at him with a "What? In the 21st Century? Dude!" look, and he explained that there had been a problem with people buying cameras in Japan either before they were released overseas or at a lower price, and then reselling them overseas, making overseas distributors unhappy, so... they disabled the ability to use the new machines sold in Japan with anything other than the local language, Japanese.

I thought about that, and it seemed significant, especially when put together with the other thing I was thinking of.... What was it? Tougher immigration laws? A renewed nationalism? Something....

"New Laptop"

I don't have enough text to make an article with one topic, so here are some other things on my mind. I have been thinking how I would very much like to have a laptop to write with while I'm outside, and so... I bought a new laptop - my first new laptop since 1996. I bought a string of used ones that worked for a few years after that new-in-1996 one burned out in 1997, but I have gotten along without a laptop for many years now - waiting until I get home to write things. Now and again I've pulled out a pen and paper and written something by hand outside, which is fun, but then I've had to transcribe it later, which is no fun at all (in fact I still have some text from last week awaiting my pounding it into electrons), so it's about time I got my hands on a proper portable writing machine.

"Takao Beer Mount"

No, I didn't make that one up, that's the name of a rooftop beer garden on Takao Mountain that I visited tonight, and after coming down off the mountain (but before getting back on a train for central Tokyo), I sat myself down by a mountain stream (on a bench - hey - I'm a city slicker after all) and pulled out the new laptop to enter some text. So, as I type this, I'm listening to the sound of mountain stream water running by... and it's about time to get a train for home, so... that's all for now. Laptop computers - Banzai!!!

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/