Neil Hopcroft

Yesterday I met Nobue-san again for lunch, this time we met at Iidabashi and went to one of the cafes by the lake there. It was quite pleasant there sitting on the lakeside, watching people feeding the fish. Though it was spoilt a little by being next to a fairly busy railway line with trains interrupting the conversation every minute or two…she seemed a little quiet so I hope it was because of the trains and not because I’ve offended her by asking lots of stupid questions (or stirring my iced coffee with a fork, or doing some other gaigin thing).

The software for my MP3 player is now obtained and installed so I’m going to be spending the next few weeks doing bitrate conversions – the player deals with 64, 96 or 128kbps, nearly everything I have is 256 or vbr. Still, the software itself is all in English with the only Japanese being on the box, so at least I understand what to do.

Last night I went to CyberAgeVoodoo in Ikebukuro again. Along with your ticket they give you a little bundle of flyers and CDs, this time there were three CDs, though I’ve been too busy doing mp3 bitrate conversions to listen to any of them yet.

Once again a fairly dancable set, though weighted a bit more toward the industrial side of things than EBM this time. The only exception being Falcos “Tango the night away”, which there really is no excuse for. There was only a single show this time around, a collective called ‘Sino (rebuilt project)’, who were great in a noisy-no-words kinda way. They had guiter (their spelling not mine), keyboard and vj, and seemed quite willing to abuse them. This is the kind of band I would like to be a part of, if I were ever to revisit making music.

Another quick entry today…since its been something of a long week and I need to go to sleep sometime soon…

Looks like I’ll be off to Finland the week after next for a week of debauched code integrationm. So I will, briefly, be back on the old GSM number – hopefully Orange haven’t forgotten me. Then I’m back in Japan for a couple of weeks, just enough to recover from the jetlag and to Europe again arriving London on the evening of 25th Oct.

Todays gadget of the week isn’t really a gadget as such, more a consumable. I found some coffee whitener (like the nasty little pots of white gloop you get at service stations to make your coffee look more grey) with a collectable series of foil lids depicting famous railway stations from all over the world….”I don’t like the trains, the trains like me”

Oh, and apparently my mail provider is lagging a bit at the moment, so I might be a little slow(er than normal) responding to any emails coming my way.

Just a quick entry today, since its gotten late again. Two good things today

– my plane tickets for Whitby arrived
– I had my first ever honey and blue cheese pizza, with salty hot chocolate to follow

Eeep, I’m turning into Iestyn, if anyone seems me riding to work on a push scooter and driving an ugly car, remind me that this is not where I want to go with my life. Thank you.

On a mildly related note I got a mail from a guy I used to vaguely work with (one of the NF guys, bart666), he’s coming to Japan next month and wondered if I’d like to meet up for a swift half…

locked and repeating…and now I think I might know why. Because I use the wrong one.

Today I bought the ugliest peripheral I have ever owned. Its bright orange with a flat face and a bulbous body. Its a MMC/SD/MemoryStick reader, which was supposed to go with my shiny new SDCard player, but due to my being stupid I forgot to get the software that transfers files to the player…will have to go back over the weekend.

…have passed since I arrived in this land. So tonight, I went out for a huge Indian meal to celebrate. Yum. Tomorrow is a bank holiday, what kind of country gives you the day off just for it being the equinox? Its not like I’m complaining, of course, since my weekend shopping trip got rained off, I just hope its dry again tomorrow.

So, a quarter of a year in, has it been worth it?

Yes, I think so – I’ve learned a whole load of things about getting along with people, I’ve seen a whole load of culture that I wouldn’t have seen in Europe, I’ve largely broken my consumerism addiction (this will never be completely broken, by the very nature of a consumerist society, society falls apart if people don’t consume, and that path, my friends, leads to anarchy…) and I’ve managed to free myself from an emotional hole I’d dug myself into.

The downside, of course, is that I’m so far away from everyone, theres something surreal about feeling alone in a city so full of people. But I’m looking forward to being back at the end of next month, and hpoe to catch up with people then.

Catching up with the pictures…

A keyboard! At last I’ve got some mobility and can sit more comfortably while typing. Its going to take a little getting used to since its a Japanese 109 key keyboard with way more squiggles per key than I know how to use and a dinky space bar.

In future I must remember not to go shopping at places who give you paper bags when its raining like this…the poor thing gave out half way home. Ooops.

I went for a wander around Shinjuku station, since it was raining outside I thought I’d explore to see home far the tunnels really go – you can walk for nearly two kilometres in the east-west direction without seeing daylight. There were some drummers though, who were very good even if the guy on shouting duty needed a microphone.

And there was a park by the entrance I finally took, a park I’ve been meaning to take a look at for a long time but have never really been close so hadn’t bothered with. It was near deserted today because of the inclement weather, which left me feeling like I’d ended up in some bizarre spooky movie – I stopped for a coffee at one of the shelter/coffee machine places, which was an 80s concrete block, there were crows all around looking bedraggled in the rain and this one guy sat in the far corner scribbling in a notebook – concentating so hard he didn’t notice I was there.

When the weather is nicer I’ll head back there, but for the moment, I’m just glad to be back home out the weather.

Someone entertain me before I spend all night posting uselessnesses like this:

neilh‘s LiveJournal Secret Crush Stats The below statistics indicate what sorta crushes neilh has on his LJ friends!

No Crush 88.9% Secret Crush 1.6% Public Crush 1.6% Ex-Crush 7.9%

What are your LiveJournal Secret Crush Stats? Tired of the sickly Suicide Girls? Faux geek porn got you down? Check out That Strange Girl.