It doesn’t snow very often in Tokyo – maybe once a year if you’re lucky. This morning was only the second time that I recall seeing the white stuff on the ground during my time here. What a beautiful sight it is – even if it’s nothing compared to what I grew up in!
On the way out the door I grabbed my camera to snap a few snowy pictures during my daily commute for your viewing pleasure:
Our street – watch your step, no sand or salt here.
Not enough to require a snow brush / ice scraper… but plenty for snowballs!
More snowball supplies.
Japanese house with a dusting of snow on the roof.
With my visit to NB just a little over a week away – this is a timely reminder of exactly what I’m going into…
Another Christmas has come and gone as they always do. It’s a shame the build up seems to take forever, but once it’s here Christmas leaves us in the blink of an eye.
Yet as short as it was, our Christmas was great – nice and relaxing with lots of downtime at home to properly enjoy the time off work.
I captured a few of our holiday moments to give you a sense of what life is like for us lately. No real adventures or reviews this time around – just a glimpse of what’s going on.
Happy New Year – and look forward to more videos in 2010!
“Going for a bike ride” has a whole new meaning around our home. Sure, it used to mean me going out on my red bike for a jaunt along the Arakawa River. Now it means Naoki taking his red bike around the neighbourhood!
Man, how priorities change.
Naoki’s new bike is pretty sweet: it’s the Ides Cargo Trike (アイデスカーゴ三輪車). It wasn’t a gift from Santa this year – it was actually his main birthday present a month and a half ago. I figured he may as well skip the whole walking thing and jump right from crawling up to riding a bike! After all, walking is for suckers.
So how does Naoki like his shiny new red trike? Will it make him the next Lance Armstrong?
A couple months ago I placed two new traditional caches around our neighbourhood: Haikyo Stairs #1 and (un-originally) Haikyo Stairs #2. As their names imply these caches were made to highlight a couple of haikyo (urban ruin) type structures in our area; the “stairs” in this case being pedestrian overpass bridges.
Both of these overpasses were completely unnecessary. They provided those on foot the option of a gruelling stair hike over a very quiet street with plenty of simpler un-elevated cross walks as alternatives. Why did Kitaku (our local ward) bother constructing them? Who knows. Clearly they had been there for several decades and their lack of use and maintenance was evident.
So is it purely coincidental that after just a few weeks of placing said caches at these locations that the city decides to take the overpasses down? The timing is unbelievable. If you ask me, it’s a little too coincidental.
Indeed – I am taking credit for this. Kitaku is a cleaner place thanks to genfab.
Now I need to find some new hiding spots…
Haikyo Stairs Caches RIP
In other geocaching news:
You may (or may not) have noticed the new menu item up top labelled cache map. I’ve put together this nifty WordPress plug-in that will map geocaching finds onto Google Maps! Pretty cool, eh? Take a gander at all our finds and see where we’ve been doing our geeky little hobby.
Should there be any interest in distributing the plug-in, I may be persuaded.
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