It’s been a while! I moved from Oregon to Southern California recently, so I’ve been busy with that and a new full-time job. But today, the weather was cool and cloudy, and I knew I wanted to get outside. I headed out, bringing along the Olympus C4100 I picked up in Tokyo earlier this year.
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This flower, right outside my front door, is not jasmine as best my research can tell. I think we do get jasmine around here, mostly planted. When you walk by a blooming jasmine plant, it smells amazing.
The trailhead I found was next to a rather dilapidated nature center – it looked pretty closed, but they did have signs for guided hikes and other community events. I wonder if that would be a good way to meet people?
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A sign on the trail had this beautifully hand-drawn map of the trail. It follows a canyon for a ways, then climbs steeply up one side to reach an end.
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If you follow this Narnia-like portal through the dense bushes, you can walk all the way up to a dead-end road at the top of the canyon. There are a few unofficial but well-loved trails carved through the hardy green shrubs, including a small overlook of the canyon, perfect for a picnic.
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Along the way, I encountered a good number of Tropaeolum majus (Garden Nasturtiums), which originated in the Andes mountains in south America, but have become naturalized in California. (Wikipedia) I included the scientific name because apparently actual nasturtiums are something else!
These plants are also entirely edible – but the flower is the most interesting part. It’s spicy!
I also encountered a number of other interesting plants whose names I do not know 😛
Near the top of the trail, I found an old cactus with some new growth…
One of the most interesting plants (to me) that I learned about on this hike was Schinus molle, commonly known as California Pepper Tree. It produces these clusters of small red berries, which are often sold dried as “Pink peppercorns”. They don’t actually have any relation to black pepper, but I can confirm that when tasted, the seeds are quite pleasantly peppery. This tree is also native to the Andes, but was widely in favor in the early 20th century as a shade tree and was planted widely over Southern California. (Wikipedia)
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After confirming that they were edible, I tasted a few. The outer flesh surrounding the seeds had mostly dried on these ones, but what remained was sweet with an herbal aromatic berry flavor. These are evergeens, so there was a tinge of that in the flavor. The seeds, of course, taste a lot like pepper. Not too spicy, but they leave a nice burning sensation in the back of your throat. I’d love to see these in a spicy fruit jam, as part of a drink, or spicing a sausage.
So much so, that I may have gathered a few bundles from a nearby tree to bring home and experiment with!
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On my way back down, I found another pepper tree – but this one was flowering! These flowers are much smaller than the resulting berries – only about 5mm wide!
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I enjoyed seeing all the edible plants along this hike. It was interesting to think about how many native plants exist that can be used as seasoning. Sometime it would be fun to make a dish seasoned entirely with foraged spices, but that will be for another weekend 🙂
A few nights ago I was watching a video on basic macro photography tips for good bug photos. Today I decided to go try them out!
The video was pretty simple overall – you need a macro lens (or an extension tube), a camera (of course), and a flash diffuser. All I have is the camera and a lens with a “macro” mode – not as good as a dedicated macro, but still acceptable.
The entire setup. A less floppy diffuser would be nice.
For the diffuser, I cut a hole in a piece of printer paper and stuck it over the lens. It works pretty well!
Look at those wings!
Weirdly, about half the bugs I approached flew away instantly. No idea why…
Bug’s Eye View of the Average Macro PhotographerA caterpillar! I wonder what the long hairs are for…
Walking around the yard peering into tall grass and plants looking for bugs, I felt like a Bug Catcher from Pokemon…
To be fair, this is probably the closest I’ll get to experiencing what it’s like to document Pokemon using a Pokedex.
Eugh. This isn’t actually a spider! It’s from the order Opiliones, which are arachnids, but not spiders. It’s also commonly known as a Daddy Long Legs, or Harvestmen. This one had a golden iridescent sheen to it – probably something about the structure of its scales refracts/reflects just the right wavelengths of light. I didn’t get a single crisp Bumblebee photo – they were always moving around, even when sipping nectar from these blackberry flowers.An ant thing. This was larger than a common black ant. This one posed for me! When I got close, it switched positions a couple of times as if trying to let me get several angles. No idea what this little dude is, but he has cool patterns on him.Another view of this ladybug.Ladybug isn’t bothered by how evil this plant looks.She crawls right up the spikes.Oh, bye!
I also got a few nice non-bug shots:
Maybe next I’ll try 3D printing an extension tube to let me use this lens for better macro shots (or one of my other lenses).
I’ve been into “vintage” digital cameras for a while (vintage meaning roughly pre-2008, at least for most electronics). This is the camera that sparked my interest in the first place: a Sony Mavica FD75 that I found for $15 at a local thrift store.
From 2001, this oddly-shaped camera is a product of the early era of digital cameras, when the much-smaller digital sensors (compared to film) meant designers could experiment with new form factors – in this case, putting the lens/sensor in the top corner of the camera body.
The unique thing about this camera though isn’t how it looks – it’s how it stores photos. This camera has a floppy drive built in, and it takes regular old 3.5″ floppy disks. This seems odd, but was actually a really good move for Sony. Flash memory was expensive and new, and required dedicated readers, which made the already high barrier to digital photography higher. But almost everyone had a floppy drive on their home computer, and dozens of floppy disks lying around.
Each floppy disk holds 1.44MB of data, which translates to about 17 photos in the high-quality setting, probably about 20-24 in normal quality – pretty comparable to film, which held about 24-36 shots per roll.
I like using this camera a lot – it has fun little sounds, lots of buttons on the back, and it feels tactile to use in a way shooting with a smartphone doesn’t. The bloops and beeps it makes (characteristic of these early 2000’s Sony cameras) makes taking pictures almost feel like a game. Each picture takes a few seconds to save, accompanied by a little animation on-screen while the internal drive grinds and clunks as it writes the data.
So – how do the photos look? Well, to cut down on cost, they used a sensor that only supports a resolution of 640×480 pixels. To be fair, that’s standard resolution, and most computer monitors’ maximum back in 2001. Nowadays though, they look pretty pixelated.
Marys Peak.
Depending on what size screen you’re looking at these on, they might actually look fine – especially if you’re viewing this page on a smartphone.
The view from Chip Ross Park.
The camera has a couple of picture modes – the photo above was taken in “Solarize” – which simplifies the color palette to fewer colors, like computers from the 80’s and early 90’s sometimes were.
Another photo taken with the solarize effect.
Despite the tiny sensor size and minimal dynamic range, I managed to get some decent photos.
The 10x optical zoom makes this camera a lot more versatile than it otherwise would be, and it’s surprisingly decent at focusing.
This photo was taken at 10x zoom. It’s hard sometimes to tell if it didn’t focus, or if the photo is just so low-quality that it’s that blurry.
This photo shows something really interesting – notice the diamond shaped bokeh (the blurs of light in the background) – this indicates that the aperture in the lens (the hole that varies in size to let in more or less light) is a square shape (or diamond if you wish) – another cost-cutting measure. This would usually be pretty undesirable, but I really like the effect here. Portraits with this would be fun.
This car would have been much newer when this camera first came out.Another view of Marys Peak, the tallest peak in the Oregon Coastal Range.Despite the fuzziness, this camera actually does really well with exposure, white balance, and colors.
Believe it or not, this is actually not the worst digital camera I’ve used! That award would go to the GameBoy Camera. It isn’t even the second worst! That’s a tiny old Vivitar camera that was just awful.
ChatÃmanwi, or Mary’s Peak, is the tallest peak in the Oregon Coastal Range.It’s about a 45 minute drive from home, and has beautiful views and flowers in the spring.
In the middle of moving, I somehow still found time to buy another camera . . . To be fair to myself, I’ve pared my collection from about 30 to only 8 I plan to keep, so I’m doing good.
The limitations of my compact “prosumer” digital cameras (dynamic range, small sensor size) had me wanting to upgrade to a DSLR, so when I found this Nikon D200 (A high-end APS-C sensor camera from 2008), I jumped at the opportunity to snatch it, batteries, and a lens for $77.
The white spot at the upper right is lens flare – you can’t see the sun in the photo, but light from it is causing this artifact on the image.
Today I needed a break from working on moving plans. So I took the D200 out to the Mary’s River natural area, a seasonal wetland about 15 minutes from where I live.
One advantage of the larger sensor (about 6x larger than my other cameras) is the bokeh–or background blur–I can achieve with it. However, I have to be more careful of focus. Here, you can see the flower isn’t totally crisp.
In the spring, it has a ton of flowers – now less, but I still managed to see around a dozen different types.
This blackberry blossom had a ton of little beetles (or weevils?) crawling among the stamen. Poison oak was also aplenty. It’s easy to spot at this early stage, because of its red, shiny new leaves.I don’t actually know if I react to it – so far, I’ve either been extraordinarily lucky, or don’t react to its oil.Another bug! Notice the sunspots right above the bug – the flat sides are due to the physical shape of the opening in the camera lens. Some people don’t like this effect – I do.A weevil friend! You can tell due to its distinct “snoot” and antenna attached halfway up the snoot.For this photo, to get everything sharp, I had to use a smaller aperture (the hole in the lens that lets light through) – the smaller the hole, the deeper the area in focus is. The larger the hole, the less deep the area of focus is. Most of the photos above used the largest opening size in the lens. There were SO MANY DAISIES. I really wanted to pick a bouquet, but didn’t want to carry it (in addition to my camera and bag) all the way back. Wasps are pollinators too, but I still prefer honeybees 😛
One nice thing about this camera (and its 10MP sensor) is that – as long as the image is in focus enough – I can crop quite a bit. The wasp image above was about 8x larger than what you’re seeing, but due to the higher resolution of the sensor, I can crop in to just what I care about afterwards.
This old car is hanging halfway over the edge of the river bank, supported by several trees grown through it. It might be a Fiat 850 or something close, but I can’t tell for sure.I love the colors and very soft grain of this photo.More daisies . . . …Woah, not a daisy!This might be my favorite photo of this whole walk. These flowers are beautiful, and the bokeh, lighting, and colors are fantastic.I’m not sure what bird this was.Two bugs sharing a daisy!Delightfully evil looking plant.This bumblebee was a happy accident – I was snapping photos of something else and heard a buzzing near my ear!The 2015 Chevrolet Volt isn’t the sleekest of cars, but I like mine.
All for now!
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These two days have also been pretty relaxed. Despite having two weeks here, I’m realizing that I’ve spent a lot of days relaxing. Tomorrow, I plan to take a trip to Mount Nokogiri, which will take the entire day, so saving up on energy isn’t a terrible idea.
5/4: Just hanging around
Today, the plan was to go to a cat cafe with one of the other people at the guest house, and then go to an Onsen (a traditional Japanese public bath). However, first I spent some time blogging, and then once we finally left and got to the cat cafe, it was full for the day. So instead, we headed to a sweets shop, and I bought more candy than I’ve gotten in years (my favorite was the strawberry flavored KitKats). After this, we headed to a park and chatted for a while while snacking on the sweets.
On the way back, we took a route along a little footpath winding through the residential buildings and I took a number of photos.
The text on this sign translates to “Crime Prevention Promotion District” (top left is “Adachi Ward” and top right is “Metropolitan Police Department”)
5/5: The plans for 5/4!
Today’s first task was to figure out what I’m doing for the next few days. I have one free day left – tomorrow, and then Wednesday will be a travel day completely.
Tomorrow my plan is to take a day trip to Mount Nokogiri (as I think I mentioned at the beginning of this post) – so I packed my bags and planned the route. We will see if I have the energy for 6 hours of train rides tomorrow – or if I stay home.
However, once I was done with my productive tasks in the morning, I finally headed out to the cat cafe, and this time they had space for us!
Checking in to the cat cafe was a small process – first, we removed our shoes and put them on a rack (most places in Japan are shoes-off inside, aside from stores). Then, we washed our hands, and went through a small gate. The lady running the cafe gave us slippers to wear, and led us up to a table before taking our coffee orders. Almost immediately, a large orange car sauntered over and flopped down on top of the menu (which we were fine with, of course).
All around the small room, there were about 8 cats lounging around, mostly napping. The room was quiet and had some soft jazz playing, and there were a few other people around petting the cats. I was quite sleepy (but so were the cats), but it was nice to sit and pet them (or watch them sleep) as we sipped our drinks.
After an hour at the cat cafe (which cost 1200 yen, about $8.40), we left and headed back to the guesthouse. On the way, I grabbed another vending machine drink (a pineapple soda?) and a green grape flavored popsicle I’d had a few days ago and was craving.
I also keep seeing these green public payphones – and am tempted to make a call on them, but have nobody to call and no reason to…
After all this, I headed (finally!) to the Onsen. Japanese Onsen are essentially public baths (IE, you are in male or female rooms with public baths). You walk into the bath room, put your clothes in lockers, rinse off, and then sit in hot-spring water that’s close to 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) or cold water that’s closer to 18 Celsius (54 Fahrenheit). You can alternate between these two, or just do one (most people do the hot water, not the cold water). There was also a sauna, but that cost extra.
I stayed in the baths for about 30 minutes (I would have gone longer, but had plans this evening to make), but they were very relaxing.
When I first got in, I accidentally got into the electric shock bath (it had nobody already in it, and being shy I went for the bath that was empty – oops!) It’s apparently supposed to exercise your muscles and help you lose weight, by sending small electric currents through the bath (and you) which make your muscles twitch. It certainly made my muscles twitch! I didn’t stay in long enough to notice weight loss effects, though ;P
An older Japanese man in the (non-electric) bath next to me asked (probably after seeing my face upon realizing I was in the electric bath) if I was ok – to which I replied yes, and he said, pointing knowingly at the bath, “electric!”
He then asked me where I was from (“USA”), where I was staying in Japan (“Tokyo, at Makoto Guesthouse”) and (after a few failed attempts of me not understanding what he was asking) what my impression of Japan was. I told him I liked it very much. He asked how old I was (“Twenty-four”, though I don’t know if he understood what I meant), then wished me a nice day before climbing out of the bath and going to rinse himself off.
I would go back to the Onsen if I had time – afterwards, I felt very relaxed and calmed.
The rest of the evening has been spent in the common area of the guesthouse writing this post and eating dinner. Tomorrow, if I’m feeling up for it, I will head to Mount Nokogiri!
I woke up early for my interview (for real this time), which went well!
Then I headed back to the guesthouse to drop my luggage off after checking out of the hotel. I wasn’t allowed to hang out at the guesthouse till after 5PM, so I headed back out to Akihabara, the “Electric City” district. I’d already been, but I wanted to do more exploring, and potentially buy a piece of retro technology for myself.
On the way to the subway station, I saw two little dogs sitting out in the sun in front of a shop. Seeing me grin and stop to take out my phone for a photo, the Japanese lady who ran the shop waved me over, so I stooped to pet them.
They were so soft!The subway was actually quite empty at this time of day! Normally there are so many people around that I don’t feel comfortable taking photos.There are a lot of really cool old neon signs in Akihabara, which I imagine would look awesome at night.
After getting to Akihabara, I explored another set of electronics department stores I hadn’t gone into yet.
I did find a shop with a bunch of older digital and analog cameras, and was very tempted to get some – but most weren’t that interesting (or were overpriced).
I did find the same model as the camera I’d originally brought that stopped working (momentarily)! But it was like $65, which is far more than I want to pay.
It is in muuuch nicer condition than mine is though…Of course, there were Nintendo consoles also.
I didn’t end up buying anything – it turns out some of the shops I was thinking of buying from were closed (It’s Golden Week here in Japan – the longest vacation most Japanese people get, so a lot of places are closed while the owners take vacation). That was better anyway – I wasn’t super excited about anything I saw, and I’m headed to a flea market on Saturday, so need some spending cash for that.
Next I headed to Ueno Park, a large park in the middle of the Ueno district in Tokyo. In the middle of the park is an old Buddhist temple, but it’s surrounded by ponds and other greenery.
DUCK BOATS! I told myself that if they were less than 1000 yen, I’d get one…
The duck boats were 800 yen (for a swan one), 700 yen for a basic covered boat, and 500 for a rowboat, all for 30 minutes. So I got a covered boat!
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My legs did not fit in the boat well, but I managed regardless to make a decent loop around the lake. It was fun, though would have been a little easier with another person (and shorter legs).
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After this, I walked over to the Buddhist temple, and explored around it a bit.
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After this, I headed across another bridge across the pond and stumbled upon a small flea market. And I found a lot of cool things!
An Original Gameboy for 800 yen (About $5.60)
A Gameboy camera for 500 yen ($3.50)
A Japanese Yoshi game for 500 yen (Still $3.50)
A cute ceramic cup for Mo for 300 yen ($2.10)
A pair of vintage sunglasses that I’m hoping don’t make me look too much like a serial killer for 2000 yen ($14)
A brass whistle with a Nissan label on it (gonna carry it on my keychain to get people’s attention if needed – another guy tested it for 500 yen (STILL $3.50!)
I’d forgotten how difficult the Gameboy’s screen is to see, let alone photograph. Anyway, trust that the photos from the Gameboy camera look a little better in real life. Only a little. Unfortunately, immediately after getting the Gameboy to turn on and boot the Yoshi game I had to relinquish control to Izara, one of the other guesthouse guests, who has become very invested in the game. The sound doesn’t work, but if you plug in a pair of headphones it does.
On my way back to the subway station, I snapped a few more photos in the sunset glow.
OLYMPUS C4100I tried drawing this flower later in the evening. There is a reason I have not posted the drawing.A majestic tree and gateAn older metro car that was sitting in the neighborhood I walked through.This kindly-looking old man was taking a smoke break when I walked by. The streetcar above was behind him and I tried to sneak a photo of him, but it looks like he noticed (and didn’t mind)Little planters of flowers outside people’s houses are really common here, which is really cute!A lot of Honda Supercub mopeds around! I’m pretty sure driving a Moped would be illegal for me here, but I also haven’t seen any places to rent them.
After this, I hung out in the common area and shared my finds with the other guests. I also got sushi at a conveyor belt place down the road, but forgot to take photos.
Today was a nice day! First up, I met up with Joyce Peterson for brunch.
I had an acai bowl. For Japan, this was pretty expensive – almost $10!
After this, we walked around Yoyogi Park, which is a large park with lots of picnic space. Next to the park is a forest with a large Buddhist temple in the middle and multiple large Japanese gates. It’s a big tourist attraction, so we started exploring, then when Joyce had to make another appointment, I kept exploring. It was really nice to see her!
Within the forest there was a botanical garden which cost (only 500 yen!) to enter. Lots of flowers, ponds, and even some bonsai!
One of the entrances to the gardens.
(I do wonder how old these are… Some bonsai take years to perfect, and still require maintenance. These looked quite impressive!)
This one wasn’t part of the gardens officially – it was growing along the path.
There was an ancient well (spring) inside the park too that was less impressive than it was made out to be – just a little circular pond of water flowing into a creek that fed one of the ponds in the park. Before I could see the well, I had to wait in a line of people for about 5 minutes 😛
Outside in the forest there were a number of (attractions? things? monuments?) including this one with a ton of large paper lanterns.
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Outside the park was an area of food vendors and a young Japanese guy beatboxing – I didn’t get a picture of him, but the sounds he was making were actually quite impressive.
I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like this guy was smiling towards me as I took the photo. This little weird electric car was next to a restaurant outside the park. It’s a single-seater, probably for doing food delivery. This little blue Kei car was cute.Mariokart? O.OI forget the Olympics are this old!
After the park and exploration, I stopped at an “American Burger” place to see whether it lived up to the name.
I got a chicken based sandwich, and it was actually one of the best chicken sandwiches I’ve had, probably top three. It doesn’t look it, but with the jalepenos and fried chicken, it was delicious. (Maybe I was pretty hungry too…)
I was pretty tired of walking around (and just tired too – still catching up on sleep), so I went to my hotel (not the guesthouse – I had only booked for 6 nights, and when I went to extend my stay, the 29th and 30th were booked – so I got a different hotel for those two nights and booked the guesthouse again from the 1st through the 7th).
It was a private bed, but unfortunately it was also a very basic room, the bed squeaked each time I moved a centimeter, and the only light in the room made me feel like a lab rat. But, it was a place to sleep!
All for today! This post was kind of low effort, but honestly so was half of this day, so…
Oh, what a day! Today didn’t start till it nearly ended – I spent most of the day just relaxing at the guesthouse (which was somewhat forced – my wallet had been misplaced the day before, and it wasn’t found until it was a little late to head to the flea market I had originally planned to go to.)
So instead, I blogged, chatted with folks at the hostel, and relaxed.
But!
In the evening, a large group of us (18 people) left the hostel to go to a Korean Barbecue place with all-you-can drink lemon sours.
The Korean barbecue placeKorean barbecue is mostly meat – brought raw to the table, and cooked over a small gas grill to your preferred level.One of the meats I had was a beef tongue with lemon slices, and then some seasoned guts.This was vanilla ice cream with a pomegranate syrup? It was almost a vinaigrette. One of the other people from the guesthouse wanted to try my camera!
After the barbecue, we ran across someone with a guitar jamming out next to the train station. Several people ended up dancing while the rest of us watched in a circle, and at the end we clapped and left him a few tips. (Sadly, I did not get a photo of this!)
Then, we navigated all 18 of us back to the guesthouse through two train stops. For some reason, the Korean Barbecue place only gave us one check, not split by tables (for about $400 USD) – so we spent the next hour and a half trying to decipher the Japanese receipt and figuring out who needed to pay how much. After much ado, we ended up just splitting everything evenly (except for the people who didn’t have a lot). The guy who paid was also american, so I acted as a bank and took some of the cash and sent him money via Venmo. Now I have spending cash for the rest of the trip!
On the way back we had ran across a couple of Japanese locals who’d just left a bar, and they convinced a number of our group to join them for karaoke after the payment sorting out had happened.
I did not go back out, but instead stayed back and kept chatting with one of the other guests. We lost track of time as we chatted, until the other group came back from Karaoke . . . At 4:30 AM 😅
Then of course, we had to chat with the folks who’d come back for a while, and then by the end of that, the sun had begun to rise. At that point, it looked nice outside, and we were already not going to get good sleep – so we just headed out to the quiet morning streets, grabbed a coffee at 7-11, and meandered around the quiet neighborhood as the sun rose.
Olympus C4100We watched this cat for a while, it watched us.The weathered paint here looked cool. This photo somehow almost looks like a miniature scene to me. I was told that the common use of tiles has to do with earthquake resistance? Olympus C4100
Finally at around 10AM, I ended up heading to bed – and now after 8 hours of sleeping (I woke up at 6PM), I’m here chilling and writing this post. I’ll (in theory) go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour! I have to, because I check out of this guesthouse tomorrow at 10 AM. I’ll be back to this same guesthouse in a few days – I wanted to extend my stay for the rest of the trip, but the next two days are booked out – so I’ll be staying in another guesthouse for two nights before coming back for the rest of my trip.
A blog post written on the same day as the post is about? Wild!
I continue to forget to take pictures of my breakfasts – generally by the time I get breakfast I’m too focused on eating to remember! But, this morning I walked to a nearby grocery store to grab bananas, yogurt, granola, and orange juice. I also grabbed a few mini oranges for snacks throughout the next few days. The hostel I’m in has a kitchen, which means I can actually cook if I want! I will be taking advantage of it – being able to make my own food will be nice.
After breakfast (and writing the past two blog posts), I decided to head out to a nearby park. I wanted to spend the day very relaxed, so walking around the park seemed like a good idea (and a good way to learn my new camera)!
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Honestly, not a lot to say here – most of these pictures are from the park!
These tiles were cute!
One thing I did notice walking around (that I had heard before) was that there are a lot of vending machines – on the corners of streets, tucked among residential houses. Mostly they have drinks, and one even had alcohol? This is how I know the legal drinking age in Japan is apparently 20 years.
Of course, I also took pictures of vehicles. There are a ton of kei vehicles here (Kei vehicles are a specific class of car in Japan, limited to a certain size and engine displacement. In return for the limits, they are cheaper and get tax benefits compared to normal cars)
This moped had a “The North Face” and Prius Hybrid Energy badge on it. Somehow I doubt this scooter is a hybrid…
There are still more mopeds here, and more bikes even. I’d say there are more cars than mopeds, but about the same number of bikes as cars.
…
More pillars for Felix!There were a lot of gardens as part of the park. I sat here for a while, reading.If you look really close, this is a selfie!I thought this light looked really cool.These lanterns were just hanging above this pathway.I liked the light sort of filtering into this small courtyard.This clock looked really cool among the trees!I really liked this poppy against the tile.This light tower looked cool framed through this wire fence.Another light tower, framed through tree branches.
As I was sitting here writing this post, another guest checked in – she is here from China, and brought her Erhu (a two-stringed traditional Chinese instrument) and she played a bit for us! She played Master Oogway’s theme from Kung Fu Panda – and it was beautiful. She’s been practicing for 20 years!
This, obviously, is not her – this is just the first good public domain image I could find for an Erhu.
After the park, I walked back to the hostel, stopping at a local grocery store for a couple of snacks.
After sitting and writing this blog post for a while, I left again, this time with several other folks from the Hostel, to get sushi at a nearby sushi conveyor belt place.
I think I got about 7 plates, which cost only about $13.75!
At this place, you order on a tablet, and then (sometimes as little as 60 seconds later!) your food zooms up on the belt next to the table.
The squid, close upCoffee jelly for desert!
After the dinner, we walked back to the hostel with a quick stop at a convenience store for drinks and snacks, and then we came back to the hostel to sit around the main area and talk and laugh.
Both of these days were sort of travel days so I have less content, and I decided to combine them into one post.
4/21: Last day in Malaysia
My flight out of Malaysia was at 12:10 AM, so I needed to leave for the airport around 8PM (an hour of travel to the airport + 3 hours to get through it). I also needed a solid nap before since I hadn’t gotten enough sleep the last few days, and it would be a 7-hour flight. So my plan for the day:
Get breakfast
Spend my remaining Malaysian cash at a local street market and take more photos
Nap
Go to the airport
After breakfast (which I forgot to take a photo of, but it was the same thing I got for dinner my first night in Malaysia), I started heading to the markets. However, when I pulled my camera out to take a photo, I realized it was dead. I’d forgotten to charge my spare batteries, so I instead walked to a nearby shop for some batteries. When I put them in, the camera . . . wouldn’t extend the lens!
The Olympus is dead, long live the Olympus!
I paid $5 for this camera at Goodwill in July last year, and despite it being grimy, after some cleanup it worked great. It’s since become one of my favorite cameras, being covered in manual controls, with a flip-out screen, and enough resolution to take pretty decent photos for web use (5MP). Later in the summer, I was using it on the beach and it got splashed in a sandy wave as I was trying to take a closeup photo of waves (my fault). It stopped working for a bit after that, but then started working again! The lens made a grinding noise each time I would open it, but it kept working! So I brought it on this trip, having used it for hundreds of photos since then.
Sadly, it finally seems to have given up the ghost 😦
Oh well, for $5 and probably over a thousand photos, I can’t complain! A replacement of the same model will cost around $30 if I find a nice example on eBay.
Of course, I have my phone for photos – but I really prefer a camera with a proper lens, even if it’s from 2003. So now my plan was:
Get breakfast
Spend my remaining Malaysian cash at a local street market and take more photosGo find a used camera for less than $50
Nap
Go to the airport
So, I spent the next hour and a half walking sweatily from camera store to camera store, hoping to find something of around the same era for about $50…
This store clearly used to be a photo store, but isn’t anymore. There were a surprising number of camera/film stores, though!
And didn’t find anything! The camera stores either only sold new cameras, only had film cameras, or had a small selection of too-new, too-expensive cameras.
Luckily, the next place I was headed was Tokyo – the perfect place to find a deal on an older digital camera, so I held out for a day and just used my phone.
Of course, I found more interesting vehicles – a nice example of one of the more popular moped models, a neat van, and a small (for the US) delivery truck painted to look like The Incredible Hulk.
As I walked, I also took more photos of the streets – in this area, bustling with shops and market activity.
Then, I went back for my nap. Malaysia was really cool, and I knew Japan would be too, but being sleep deprived (and less excited about how expensive Japan would be), I was having a hard time looking forward to the next leg of my trip – I would really have rather gone home.
Traveling has been really fun, and I’m glad I’m here, but it’s been hard, too. I really like having a place I’m completely comfortable in to retreat to when I need a break, and obviously when you’re traveling (and mostly in shared dorm rooms), that’s not very possible. Add that to changing cities and countries every few days, a new language that you don’t know, new cultures you have to think about, and having to figure out where to eat for every single meal every single day, and it gets pretty exhausting.
(As I’m writing this, I feel better – I still wish I could go home sooner, but that would be prohibitively expensive, and I recognize a lot of my feeling like this comes from having been behind on sleep. I’ll be at this hostel for 6 days, I just slept for 16 hours, and there are grocery stores nearby at which to get food for breakfast and any other meal I don’t want to go to a restaurant for – I’ll probably take the next few days a little easier, then feel more ready to explore Japan.)
Anyway! Post nap, I packed and headed back to the airport.
The tower near my hostel had lights along the sides that I hadn’t realized were there during the day! The street market was busier than ever, and I think I didn’t really see as much as Malaysia had to offer – I will have to come back sometime for a more dedicated trip.
On my way out, I grabbed a couple of “thousand layer patties” (little warm pastries which have chicken or beef stuffed in them) from a street shop for dinner. At the airport, I ate these alongside a Dunkin Donuts iced latte before boarding.
This plane was much more like a normal American flight, without screens, free food, or fancy seats. It did have more legroom than normal, though! I slept for most of the flight.
4/22: Camera hunting in Toyko!
The next morning around 8:30AM local time, I landed at Narita International Airport, about 65km from Toyko. Here, I charged my phone, got some cash (cards are less commonly accepted in Japan, apparently), and ate some breakfast at the airport before buying a train ticket into Toyko.
Check-in time at the hostel wasn’t till 5PM, so I headed first to Shinjuku Station, around which there are a lot of camera stores with both new and used gear.
The first few stores I stopped at I felt too poor to walk into – lots of expensive cameras (the cheapest were around $500 USD), pretty but far outside my budget (and not what I wanted, anyway). However, the third one I walked into had an “as-is” shelf, and on that shelf, an Olympus C4100! After testing it, I paid 3500 Yen ($24.50 USD) for the camera and two memory cards (it takes a different kind than my current one does).
This one is slightly older (2002 vs 2003) and a little lower quality, with 4MP instead of 5, no flip-out screen, and a slightly less nice lens. Fundamentally though, it is a very similar camera.
Glad to have found a replacement camera, I headed back out and took a few photos. It was a rainy grey day (much like Oregon!) and it made the streets wet and the bright signs pop against the grey buildings and skies.
Olympus C4100
I’m pretty happy with this camera! Straight out of the camera the images have a lot of color, though I can tell the dynamic range is worse (I had to do more minor adjustments to these images in order to bring the bright areas down and the dark areas up than I normally would do for the other camera).
I’ve seen a few of these not-quite-motorcycle, not-quite-car things around.
There were a few more camera shops to stop by, so of course I did. What, just because I found a camera doesn’t mean I won’t look at more!
I forgot to take pictures of the last camera store I went to, but it would have been a perfect place if I hadn’t already found a good camera. It was a small shop, crammed floor to ceiling with antique to (somewhat) modern cameras, mostly film, but with a good mix of digital in there too. There were a lot of cameras sold non-working, most for only a couple thousand yen ($10-30 USD). Of course they had working cameras too, also for what seemed to be good prices (under 20,000 yen in a lot of cases, or USD $140). I may have bought two parts cameras of the same model, in the hopes of combining them into one working camera… They were only $30 together!
I love how small these are! With digital cameras it’s not so surprising, but there’s only so small you can get with 35MM film. The cute factor was part of why these were so irresistible.
These are half-frame cameras, meaning they shoot two photos per one film frame (by using only half of the frame each time). This effectively halves the resolution of the photo which does decrease the quality, but means you can get either 48 or 74 shots depending on what type of film you use! With the cost of film, this is definitely a benefit.
They’re from around 1963 (62 years old!) and neither one works – the shutter doesn’t seem to properly close. I suspect (after watching a video on YouTube) that the shutter blades just need to be cleaned, but I’m not completely sure yet.
(To Felix and Katerina: I don’t think I’ll get the chance to rent a moped 😦 I believe the laws are a lot more restrictive in Japan, and in Italy and Malaysia it didn’t seem safe to do so. Someday I will go back to Barcelona, and I’ll be sure to rent one there! Instead, your moped money will go towards some nice sushi!)
All for now! Let’s hope my spare luggage space survives the next few days – no more camera shops!
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