So.... Dreamwidth? Yes, or no?

And, resuming writing longform for friends to read? Anybody still want me to do that? I do miss it, but I don't claim enough ego to think others really do.

I keep trying to make myself sit down and do a proper "long-form writeup" of the Japan trip. Something to put a better narrative to all the tweets-as-I-went and unlabeled pile of Flickr photos. Maybe at some point the urge will win out and I'll actually do it. Until then I keep stumbling over the same thought: it's not about where I went or ( Read more... )

So much I want to say, so much I want to write. But I'm content, jetlagged and lazy, sipping souchu and watching Anthony Bourdain talk about his travels while I re-adjust to a normal schedule. So instead, I write this ( Read more... )

https://youtu.be/qaYUjH8Wf38

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(As with all of these entries, they only apply to Hokkaido and not all of Japan. Heck, they only apply to the places I've personally visited while in Hokkaido. YMMV, yadda yadda)Onsens. Hot springs. Swimming pools, movie stars... wait, no. Let me start again ( Read more... )

(As with all of these entries, they only apply to Hokkaido and not all of Japan. Heck, they only apply to the places I've personally visited while in Hokkaido. YMMV, yadda yadda)A quick note about elevators here ( Read more... )

(I'm going to do these little what-I-learned-today kind of things at random, just because. Expect a few of them.)
(As with all of these entries, they only apply to Hokkaido and not all of Japan. Heck, they only apply to the places I've personally visited while in Hokkaido. YMMV, yadda yadda)One of the goals of this trip was to avoid pish-posh ( Read more... )

Just to be honest about things: planning this trip the way I did was absolutely crazy. It was just due to a 10pm getting-crazy-cheap tickets ($350rt) to Tokyo after seeing them on a realtime twitter travel feed and a quick text approval from my boss for the time off. Then added in a Lonely Planet article on "Hokkaido Road Tripping", and boom, ( Read more... )

I'm at the San Jose airport waiting on my flight to Japan. I'm going to fly to Tokyo, take the high speed rail all the way to the new end of the line in Hakodate and spend two weeks road-tripping in the backcountry of Hokkaidō ( Read more... )

Back on March 18th I swapped from a Nissan Leaf (24kWh version) to a 2016 Kia Soul EV. At first I felt kind of weird about bailing on the Leaf (30kWh version) but after a few weeks of driving I know I've made the right decision. The Soul is so much better ( Read more... )