July 17: Roppongi Crossing, Odaiba

 When we planned the trip, I was expecting that the kids would insist on visiting the Ghibli museum. But to my surprise when it came time to book it in June they weren’t excited about it. It wasn’t easy to do so while we were in Europe, and our backup plan to get those booked by a friend didn’t work out, so we ended up with a spare day.

I asked Gemini what a photography oriented morning would look like, and it suggested that Omoide Yokocho Memory Lane followed by a trip to Roppongi Hills. We took the subway to Omoide Yokocho, and indeed, the place was worth photographing. We weren’t night people, but I could see that at night the place would be very crowded and it would be even harder to get a good picture.

Roppongi Hills was much more of a mixed bag photography wise. On the one hand, they were preparing for a Doraemon event, which meant there were Doraemon statues everywhere, giving the place a distinctive “only in Japan” look. On the other hand, the city view tower wasn’t opened until 10am. Disappointed, we walked back out towards Roppongi crossing, and there found that it wasn’t that photogenic either. We noticed that there was a Fujifilm Photo History Museum that was also open at 10am, and walked around the Midtown Garden which was open.

When the Fujifilm Museum was opened we went in. There were huge displays of various cameras, but surprisingly, many of their cheap consumer cameras like the Instax were out of stock. I was surprised but I guess selling cameras wasn’t the priority for the museum. We then walked over to the City View tower and bought tickets to go in. There were two other events going on at the same time. One was an anime art exhibit that was completely sold out, and the other was an escape room puzzle based in the same city view tower! While walking around the tower, we would see groups of people huddled around paper puzzles and trying to solve them. It looked very intriguing but we couldn’t participate because everything was in Japanese.

Lunch was Ramen at the Afuri Roppongi Crossing Gate. This was a chain restaurant that was very popular, but as with all Ramen places, they seated us quickly once we got our orders in, splitting the kids up into another table so they could fit us in in timely fashion. Japanese kids are expected to be much more independent than American kids, but fortunately, Bowen and Boen were happy to eat without their parents watching over them.

Xiaoqin thought it might be a good idea to visit teamLab Planets Tokyo DMM. We took the subway to a nearby station, but it started raining heavily, forcing us to stop by the Gas Science Museum, a free museum run by the gas company. It was surprisingly propaganda light, but also targeted to a much younger age group than Bowen and Boen. By the time we made it to the Tokyo DMM, there was a huge line out the door. We were offered a choice to skip the line by paying $600, or make a booking for 6pm that night. We demurred. I then suggested that we visit the Gundam statue. Boen and Bowen had no idea what it was, but they decided to go for it. Xiaoqin was tired of riding the subway and decided to walk.

The Unicorn Gundam turned out to be outside a huge shopping center. Even to folks who’d never seen the anime, it’s an impressive statue and you could see lots of people taking pictures. Many were carrying “Gundam Base” shopping bags. It turned out that inside that huge shopping center on the 7^th floor was a Gundam fan store. We made it there only to discover that the real hobby shop could only be visited if you have a reservation. We visited the merchandising section which was free to visit without reservations, but didn’t buy anything. After this Xiaoqin joined us and we walked over to the fake Statue of Liberty. This overlooked the Tokyo Aqua Symphony, which played frequently enough that we stopped and watch it! When the symphony was over, we realized we were now close to when the Gundam statue was going to animate, so we went back to see it. That was a complete disappointment. All that happened was the top of the statue moved a little bit. I was sorry we wasted the time and effort!

For dinner, Xiaoqin thought we should visit the Ginza Corridor Street. This street was completely lined with restaurants of all sorts. We ended up walking into the Wagyu Sukiyaki. They asked if we had reservations, and we said No. “We’re full…” said the store manager. Then another employee walked in. “Hold on… Wait outside. It’ll be 10 minutes while we set up.” Apparently with the restaurant fully staffed the manager was now willing to take on 4 more customers! This was a level of flexibility I did not expect from a Japanese store manager.

This was the kids’ first time having Sukiyaki, and for myself, it’d been so long since I last had it that I didn’t remember when the last time I had it was. None of us balked at the raw egg that we would dip our Sukiyaki meat in. The food was delicious, we were hungry, and all that food went into our stomach in less than 30 minutes. When we were done they sprinkled truffle mushroom bits onto our rice and we downed it all. What a great meal.

Outside, it had started to rain again as we walked back to the Ginza station. Fortunately, it had stopped raining by the time we got to our AirBnB stop, and the walk back to the AirBnB for our last night was dry. Back at the AirBnB, we proceeded to pack for our flight to Hokkaido. First, we removed all the packaging—camera boxes, etc just took up valuable space. Then, we reconfigured so that what we needed for the flight would go into a carry on bag, while everything else would go into our checked bag. Finally, we told Bowen to get rid of his worn out shoes. While all this was happening we got the laundry started. We wouldn’t have laundry service when we landed at New Chitose Airport.

Review: The Upstarts

 The Upstarts is a corporate origin story about both AirBnB and Uber. Obviously, Uber has gotten a lot of press, and so has AirBnB (and in fact, I met one of the founders way back when they were tiny), but this book is a b it dated (published 2017), so I was afraid it wouldn't be relevant. To my relief, the book provided lots of details behind the scenes that I didn't know before.

One thing I didn't know was how AirBnB got traction. It turned out that the engineering co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk was a growth hacker (he previously worked on spamming software), and successfully hacked the growth of AirBnB in 2 ways:

While Airbnb has always minimized the impact of these programs, each bore the unmistakable mark of Nathan Blecharczyk. In late 2009, a few months after it had graduated from YC, Airbnb appeared to create a mechanism that automatically sent an e-mail to anyone who posted a property for rent on Craigslist, even if that person had specified that he did not want to receive unsolicited messages. If the apartment was listed in, say, Santa Barbara, the e-mail would read: “Hey, I am e-mailing because you have one of the nicest listings on Craigslist in Santa Barbara and I want to recommend you feature it on one of the largest Santa Barbara housing sites on the Web, Airbnb. The site already has 3,000,000 page views a month.” All these e-mails were identical except for the city, and they typically emanated from a Gmail account bearing a female name. (pg 99)

When that drew attention and they were asked to desist, they played another trick:

 Instead of luring Craigslist users to Airbnb, the company did the opposite: it allowed users to take a streamlined version of their elegant listing on Airbnb and then cross-post it with a single click on Craigslist. “Reposting your listing from Airbnb to Craigslist increases your earnings by $500 a month on average,” the site informed prospective hosts. “By reposting your listing to Craigslist, you’ll get the benefit of more demand, while still being able to use Airbnb to manage and moderate your inquiries.” (pg 101)

What I was surprised by was how sympathetic the coverage of Travis Kalanick was. The book pointed out, for instance, that peer to peer driving wasn't pioneered by Uber, because Kalanick was convinced it was illegal and would be shut down. It was Lyft that did so, yet Lyft never got bad press because the founders never came across as belligerent:

Logan Green and John Zimmer, escorted by Susan Kennedy, also made their way up to the fifth floor. They were earnest and personable, explaining with their usual missionary zeal their goal of filling empty seats in cars. “They always came across as choir boys,” says Kennedy. The CPUC “had to trust somebody when writing new laws. You can’t write in a vacuum, you have to listen to industry.” She speculates that if Uber had been the original advocate for ridesharing, there might have been provisions like drug testing of new drivers, which would have slowed down sign-ups and impeded the growth of the industry. “I wonder if Uber realized what they did for them,” Kennedy says. (pg 203)

Nevertheless, the book does cover what caused Kalanick to get ejected as CEO of Uber, and certainly the acquisition of Otto and defense of Anthony Levandowski was glossed over (my guess was that all that came to pass only after the book was published and the revised edition just didn't get as much put into it).

Another thing that this book does that most other business books do not do is that it covers survivorship bias. Rather than just focus on the genius between those 2 companies, the book covered lots of other startups in the same space but that did not make it. For instance, Couchsurfing predated AirBnB, but was constrained by its non-profit business. Similarly, there were other startups in the taxi replacement services that also failed for various reasons. It also covered extensively Uber's attempts to outpace its Chinese rivals in China, and in fact, at the end when Kalanick gave up he was asked "What made you think you could succeed in China with the government stacked against you?" His reply was unsatisfying, in that he knew it wasn't going to work but he just wanted to try for his own personal satisfaction.

I guess I came to reading this book 9 years late, but it was still surprisingly worth the time.

 

July 16: Tsukiji Fish Market

 

When you get up early, one of the places you should visit is the Tsukiji Fish Market. Nothing else in Tokyo is open as early as 7am. We first had to get Boen his new subway card, of course, but we got to the market at 8am and it was a nice happening place. One motivation was that we had dinner reservations at Kaiya Wakou that evening, and wanted to find the location as the reputation was that it was difficult to find. But once we got to the market we were overwhelmed by the displays of food that we walked several circuits of the outer market, sampling various foods before finally sitting down at a sushi place for some good dining. When we finally found the restaurant’s location the local stall owners told me that the place was closed but we knew that. We just wanted to know how to get to it tonight. Our next plan was to visit the Snow Peak Alpen Outdoor store in Shinjuku. Since we had checked baggage on Peach Airlines to Sapporo, I wanted to buy some really cheap hiking sticks for use in Hokkaido and Tokyo was the best place to get them. Furthermore, Bowen had worn out the sole of his hiking shoes, so we might as well get him new shoes while we were in Tokyo.

On the way to the store on the subway, we had to make a transition at Ginza. Xiaoqin decided that’s worth a visit, so we went out and walked around but before long, both kids were complaining so we decided to split the party, with Xiaoqin exploring Ginza while I took the kids shopping. We’d already had lunch at the fish market, so we visited the Alpen Outdoor store, located the outdoor section. Bowen found Salomon shoes to his liking, and the price after tax was reasonable, so we bought the sticks and the shoes together so we could get the tax free discount, and then went back to the AirBnB.

After having shot with the camera for the morning, I realized that I wanted a fill flash for it. None of the fill flashes at home were compatible with the Sony A7C2, so I might as well buy one. Internet shopping showed a store in Nagano that had it at a good price, and I also wanted a lens cap retainer, so hopped onto the subway to Nagano. A short walk to the store got me the Godox iT32 kit with the X5S trigger and a lens cap with a string that you could tie to the body. The Godox flash was leaps and bounds over the flashes I had for my Canon cameras. Instead of being powered by AA batteries, this unit had its own lithium ion battery, which was like having lithium batteries all the time! That made flash cycling incredibly fast, and it came with a flash diffuser, something you had to buy for the Canon flashes separately! For the price it was an incredible unit. The lens cap with a string wasn’t entirely satisfactory, but I didn’t want to burn more time camera shopping.

I walked into the Nagano mall and I was impressed. This was a beautiful mall that had both indoor and outdoors hallways connected together. So you would walk from Tokyo heat (where much of the food was) into an indoor shopping center. I spied a GEO mobile store, and found both Claire Obscur and Ghost of Yotei for very good prices. They were used but when you’re buying used from a Japanese store the disc looks sparkling clean and I had complete confidence. I bought both so I could get over the tax free limit. The shop employee emphasized to me that once I bought them tax free nothing was returnable. That was fine with me! I also bought some snacks for Bowen and Boen.

Xiaoqin and I both returned to the AirBnB at the same time, and had about a half hour of resting before it was time to visit Kaiya Wakou. Kaiya Wakou was basically a one man shop. His whole schtick is that he will grill shell fish in front of you. Along the way, he would chat, sing, and talk to you. There were 3 other people in the shop when we arrived, and they had been pretty smart, ordering for 2 instead for 4. We got overloaded with shellfish and by mid-way through the meal, Boen was so full he couldn’t eat any more. I myself had had enough shellfish that I didn’t feel like eating shellfish for the rest of our time in Japan! Nevertheless, it was a unique experience!

Tokyo/Hokkaido 2026 Index Page

This past summer, we decided to do 2 trips instead of one, because it was Bowen’s last hurrah before going to high school, where we expected him to get very busy. While my original proposal was to do the Coast to Coast hike in England, both Boen and Xiaoqin weren’t enthusiastic. Boen and Bowen both wanted to visit the Pokemon Center in Tokyo because their classmates had gone there and told them all about it. I figured that now that I was no longer being regularly asked to carry either kid (they’d both become way too heavy) it was time for me to buy a new camera. Tokyo’s the best place to buy a Japanese camera, because there is no tourist tax and there are frequent discounts during the summer.

With that, I booked direct flights from San Francisco to Narita airport via ZipAir. This was
a discount airline, but it had a good reputation and excellent pricing for summer travel. Now, the big problem with Tokyo is that it’s effectively tropical weather in mid July, which would be when we would be going.I decided that the right thing to do was to visit Hokkaido after 4 days in Tokyo, simply because it wouldn’t be absurdly hot during that time. Working off Claude, Gemini, and my previous bike tour in 2009, I decided we would attempt a hiking-oriented trip.

The problem with Hokkaido in the summer is that it’s highly impacted—you’re advised to make reservations ahead of time. So what we had to do was to place our bets as to where to have extra time so we had a chance to out wait the weather, and where to just risk having crap weather and not being able to do much about it.

Certain hikes like the Shirotoko 5 Lakes hike had to be booked far in advance, and having secured those reservations we also made bookings for the Kammuywakka Hot Springs waterfall hike. Asahidake Hot Springs was even at that early stage booked so full that lodging was expensive, so we decided to book an AirBnB for 5 nights in Biei instead. I figured there was plenty to do in Biei, and that a commute to Asahidake Hot Springs was only 45 minutes long, so it was a shorter commute than our usual visit to Mt Tamalpais from the south bay.

I also arranged to visit Drumkan, it being one of the highlights of my trip back in 2009. The brothers running the B&B were now in their 70s, but when I wrote to them they still remember our visit, mostly because of Yana Ivey. Xiaoqin and I decided that for our last night in Japan we would splurge and stay at the so-called “Secret” onsen that was just a 45 minute drive from the airport.

This is the index page for the trip, with links to photo albums and day by day trip entries.

Photo Albums

• Tokyo Fish Market
• Nakano
• Kaiya Wakou
• Tokyo
• Blue Pond and Shirahige Falls
• Biei and Furano
• Chiyoda Farm
• Mt Asahidake Loop
• Kurodake Summit 
• Ginga/Ryusei Falls and Lake Shikaribetsu
• Kitamani Fox Farm and Utoro
• Shiretoko Five Lakes
• Mt Mokoto and Lake Akan
• Mt Mashu, Mt Io & Wakoto Penninsula
• Natai Terrace
• Noribetsu Jugokudani
• Otaki Falls
• Marukoma Onsen
• Narita san Temple

Videos

• Kaiya Wakou
• Biei
• Mt Asahidake Loop
• Kamuywakka Hot Springs
• Kitamani Fox Farm
• Sahoro Resort Bear Mountain
• Noribetsu Jugokudani

Daily Journal

• July 13-14: Prologue
• July 15: Shinjuku and Shibuya
• July 16: Tokyo Fish Market
• July 17: Roppongi Crossing
• July 18: Tokyo to Chitose
• July 19: Chitose to Biei
• July 20: Biei Hot Springs, Lavender Fields, and Furano Roads
• July 21: Mt Asahidake Loop
• July 22: Asahikawa and Shinei No Oka
• July 23: Chiyoda Farm
• July 24: Biei to Suonkyo Onsen, Mt Kurodake
• July 25: Lake Shikaribetsu
• July 26: Suonkyo Onsen to Utoro
• July 27: Shiretoko Five Lakes + Kamuiwakka Hot Springs
• July 28: Utoro to Kawayuonsen
• July 29: Mount Mashu, Mount Io, and Wakoto Peninsula
• July 30: Kawayuonsen to Shintoku
• July 31: Shintoku to Noribetsu
• Aug 1: Noribetsu to Marukoma Onsen
• Aug 2: Marukoma Onsen to San Francisco, California
• Conclusions

Review: All You Need Is Kill

 All You Need Is Kill is the source novel for the Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow. The protagonist of the novel, Keiji, is a soldier in the Unified Defense Forces about to go into battle with invaders from space, the mimics. He fights in a first battle and then gets reset to the beginning of the day. From there on, he gets the opportunity to figure out how to get out of the time loop and how to go about surviving his battles.

The writing style is breezy, easy reading, and occasionally a little dumb. The plot rolls along and we get reveal after reveal, and then the ending kinda sucks, in a completely opposite approach from the way the movie's ending sucks. The movie has a happy ending that's typical of Hollywood. This novel has a bittersweet ending that's typical of Japanese TV shows, but both are similarly unearned. What's interesting is that the movie actually had an appropriate ending only to snatch it all away with a final reset, while the novel itself had a contrived reveal specifically designed to create its bittersweet ending.

The novel is short and at the very least if you try it and it's not to your liking you haven't wasted your time.

July 15th: Shinjuku and Shibuya

We had 2 goals today, which was to buy a new camera and going to the pokemon center. After breakfast, we went to the local subway and bought subway tickets. We got up so early that Yodabashi Camera wasn’t opened yet, so we went to Shinjuku Chuo park and explored the park. Even so, we still ended up waiting about 15 minutes in front of the camera shop before it opened.

When the camera shop opened, I tested both the Sony A7C2 with the Sigma 20-200mm lens, along with the Nikon Z52 with its 24-120mm lens. The Nikon was a few hundred dollars cheaper than the Sony, but when I shot the cameras with my own SD card and then compared them in lightroom on my laptop, I decided that the extra 4mm of wide angle was more valuable than the nearly imperceptible difference in image quality as well as the longer reach at the 200mm end. The Sony A7C2 with the 20-200 was also lighter by about 276g, which is more than half a pound difference. The difference wasn’t magic—the Nikon 24-105 was an F4 constant aperture lens while the Sigma degraded quickly to F6.3, which is more than a stop and a half. However, modern cameras perform well even with the ISO set to 12000 (which would have been inconceivable on any of my now ancient cameras) so that was a wash. What really made an even bigger difference was that the A7C2 had a 33 megapixel resolution, which meant that I could crop out 50% of the photo (effectively extending the reach of the 200mm lens to 400mm) and still get an 16 mega pixel image! I got a quote from the salesman, and then we went to the video game section of Yodabashi camera to shop for video games while waiting for Map camera to open.

Yodabashi’s video game store was disappointing. Boen found Pokemon Pokopia at a good price, while I got a copy of Soras for the PS5 at a discount from USA prices, which I shouldn’t have because I later found used copies at even better prices. When Map camera opened we went in and indeed got a much cheaper quote from them, but then they told me they didn’t have international versions of the Sony A7C2! Disappointed, we went to Fuunji Shinjuku for their dipping ramen. There was a line out the door, but we finally figured out that what we had to do was to go into the store anyway, and use the machine to order food. When the food was ordered we’d get tickets to hand over to the servers. What this meant was that as soon as one party left, the next party was immediately seated and the food was already ready and served! That meant that while the line was long and the restaurant tiny, turnover was rapid and we were seated and eating within 30 minutes!

After lunch, I queried ChatGPT, detailing my disappointment with the prices at Yodabashi Camera. ChatGPT replied that BIC camera had a deal where the A7C2 (international version) bundled with the 28-60mm kit lens was on sale for less than Yodabashi’s body only price. In addition, there was a 5% coupon available online which would stack with the body and the Sigma 20-200mm so that the total package price made it not worth it to stop by Map camera for the lens and then walking over to BIC. It was already very warm when we got out of the restaurant, making Boen insist on buying an electric fan from Yodabashi camera on our way to BIC.

At BIC camera, the salesman walked me through all the steps to get the coupon, and helped me pick out a circular polarizer and a screen protector for the camera. The circular polarizer is the one last filter that you end up buying, useful for removing reflectance from vegetation as well as making rainbows look better. 81B warming filters are no longer required since you can just adjust the white balance in Lightroom. As a matter of curiosity, I asked how much the international version of the Nikon Z52 would be and he told me that Nikon Z52s in Japan never came with an English menu. What you would have to do was to buy the camera, and go to the Nikon service center and pay a fee to get the English firmware installed! That confirmed for me that my decision was the right one. I bought the camera, got out my passport and got an exemption from the sales tax right on the spot.

While we were there, Xiaoqin found some cosmetics at a good price, and we also bought floss for the kids—they’d forgotten to pack their floss. After that it was time to visit the Pokemon Center Shibuya. Boen, however, announced that he had lost his subway card! This was a big headache, and necessitated us visiting no more than 3 different places in the subway station before we found someone who could talk to the station manager to cancel the lost card and do all the paperwork so that we could buy a new one tomorrow! Boen’s card was special since it was a half priced card so unlike an adult card, same day replacement was not possible.

With that ordeal out of the way we visited the Pokemon Center. The place was a zoo! It was completely crowded. It’s clear that Pokemon was a global phenomenon and we could see lots of tourists browsing all sections of the store, and the checkout line was super long as well. Boen’s goal was to buy lots of stuffed animals and it took all our parental authority to not have him fill all of our carry on luggage with stuffed animals. We checked out and everyone was exhausted, so it was time to go back to our AirBnB.

Bowen wanted Sushi and we were done with subways. We ended up at Sushi Kaoru, which when it opened was not crowded. After dinner, we stopped by the supermarket to buy real supplies for breakfast, including dessert and ice cream and went back to the AirBnB to relax and get some sleep. The AirBnB was equipped with a washer but not a dryer, so what we had to do was to do laundry after showering, and then turn the shower room into a drying room since it had a vent and you could actually set it up to reduce humidity and then close the door.

July 13-14: San Francisco to Tokyo

Our flight from San Francisco was smooth, and since we had no baggage, we could walk through the temperature sensors, scan our passports through customs, and then get our Japanese landing visa. Surprisingly enough, despite them asking us how long we planned to be in Japan, they stamped our visa for the maximum days we were allowed to be in the country.

Getting to the Keisei Skyliner counter, we bought one way tickets to the Nippori station. The Keisei Skyliner looks like an old train and is just as rocky and rickety as an old train, but moves very fast, stopping only at a few stops and not even slowing down at all when passing through stations it is not scheduled to stop at.  While much of it was underground, there was an open air section where we looked out through (closed) windows into the night scene.

Arriving at Nippori, we got to the taxi stand and showed a taxi driver the address of our AirBnB. The ride wasn’t long, but the taxi driver actually had to circle around because he actually didn’t know where it was! We got into the AirBnB, turned on all the AC as the weather was decidedly tropical, and then walked out to the local convenience store (Family Mart) to buy some snacks for dinner and breakfast. Unlike California, Japan’s supermarkets do not open until a relatively late our (9-10am!), so they’re not a good source for breakfast food!

We expected an easy jet-lag experience because we were traveling West, but it was already quite late by the time we’d all taken showers so I took a melatonin extended release pill before going to bed.