The Merry Month of May

1. ‘Tis be a merry month, for today is my birthday! Happy birthday to me! Yesterday a big group of us celebrated with a big big picnic by the river in the Peace Park, enjoying the spring sunshine and the river views and the many many cans of beer we all consumed. Strangely, I have almost no photos of the occasion, as neither photos nor words could describe just how much fun I had.

2. Last weekend was the Golden Week holidays, and a friend and I went up to Tokyo for a few days during the holidays. I took a lot of photos for that, and I’m sorting them out now. We also started a series of photos featuring my friend, Derek, who has an almost abnormal fondness for jumping in photos. Check it out here.

3. I also got myself a new mobile — a Nokia N73. It’s essentially an upgrade of my old phone here, the aging Nokia 6680. It’s a good phone, but damn the N73 is awesome! Even with Softbank’s (and other Japanese carriers) insistence on locking their phones down stupid levels (my phone doesn’t support playing mp3 files, can’t install many programs available on the internet even when it works with regular the N73) and removing functionality (my phone ships with Adobe Reader and Lifeblog, neither of which is on my phone), it still does so much — I use it like an iPod Shuffle, got about 1 Gig’s worth of music on it, as well watching movies and tv shows (converted to the same format as for the iPod) and for showing my photos. The screen is brilliant, the web browser is super sweet, and the camera does an ok job of taking pics. The camera, though, is really, really slow, even compared to the cheapest point-n-shoot digital. Even so, it’s a great phone.

4. New phone and holiday aside, I’ve also reined in the spending, and have started saving in earnest. My travel plans are changing by the day, which makes it difficult to know how much I need to save — so I’m just going to save as much as possible and see where we go from there.

5. That’s that for now, I’m going back to playing with all my presents!

Comments

  1. Happy Birthday!!

    Comment by Akie — May 15, 2007 @ 8:27 pm

  2. Thank you :)

    Comment by JohnK — May 16, 2007 @ 1:20 am

  3. Greetings John,

    Read your interesting article on hiking Fuji as I research for a trip there this August. Interesting reading and informative. I have a question.

    Do you know how I can reach Fujisan Hotel 2 at Station 8? I’d like to arrange lodging there for a group of 4.

    Thanks, in advance for your reply, and any help you can offer.

    Ed Boyer, Michigan USA

    Comment by Ed Boyer — June 11, 2007 @ 10:52 am

  4. G’day Ed, Thanks for your comment, I’m glad you found it informative! You can find a list of huts on Fuji-san here:

    http://live-fuji.jp/fuji/scott/huts.html

    We didn’t stay at a hut, and so I’m not totally sure if the info here is accurate. Also, I found another blog entry from someone who actually stayed there, just to give you an idea of what to expect:

    http://basedonatruestory.com/ldk/archives/05/09/003604_fujisan_hotel.html

    Good luck with your climb, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Be sure to bring sunscreen!

    Cheers, John

    Comment by JohnK — June 18, 2007 @ 8:21 pm

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