Review: The Eagle Tree

I rarely read my Kindle First books, despite frequently selecting one and downloading it to my Kindle anyway. The Eagle Tree is a rare exception.

The Eagle Tree is a book written from the perspective of an autistic boy of 14 years, March Wong. He's obsessed with trees, climbing them, identifying them, their place in the ecosystem, how they work. When his mom moves him to Olympia, he identifies a tree near the city as being a Ponderosa Pine, and decides that he would like to climb it.

Unfortunately, a developer has bought the land and plans to build on it. This leads March to try to preserve the forest, leading him out of his autistic shell to interact with those who can help him. The story of his bittersweet (eventual) victory is well-written, with transparent prose, and a realistic view of what those on the autism spectrum.

The novel is short but worth your time. It's not as good as Born on a Blue Day, however, so if you haven't read that, try it first.

A few EOS M3 Tips

I promised not to provide a long-term review of the EOS M3, and indeed, I won't. I didn't do most of the shooting during the Japan trip, and it's not that easy to shoot anyway when you have a 40 pound backpack that wriggles and moves. The few times I did handle the camera, I'm always impressed by it. It's a sweet piece of kit, and I can only anticipate that as mirrorless cameras improve these will increasingly take the place of DSLR, though I expect that full frame devices used with top technical skill will still be the way to go when you're not pressed by other obligations.

I did notice a few things that I think are worth considering when you work with the equipment:

• There's a list of lenses that basically won't work with the EOS M3, even with the mount adapter. In a fit of absent mindedness I can no longer find that list, but basically anything that doesn't say USM or STM on the lens is pretty much not going to focus well on the EOS M3. (And yes, unfortunately my 50mm/1.8 II is on that list, which explains the poor performance!)
• What really really drains the battery on the EOS M3 is the WiFi/NFC picture transfer to smartphone. It actually doesn't drain the battery that much to actively transfer photos. What kills it is that once you're done with the transfer, if you do not turn off the camera manually, it doesn't go into sleep mode and instead just drains your battery maintaining a WiFi network. I would advise getting a spare LP-E17 and keeping it charged because you will forget!
• One of the principles of flash photography is you want to keep the flash as far away from the camera as possible. Thanks to how small the camera itself is, and the relatively small sensor size, the standard for this is very low for the EOS M3.  Even my ancient 220EX performs very well on the EOS M3, and I can only imagine that newer flashes and/or bigger flashes do even better. Note that the 220EX is relatively tall compared to the newer (even smaller) 270EX, so I'm not sure I'd bother upgrading. By the way, since my primary use of the external flash is as a fill flash, I always dial in an exposure compensation of -2/3rd.
• Get an OP-Tech strap for it. The camera and lens combo might be light, but if you're in the habit of wearing T-shirts or collar-less shirts, then you'll discover that the OP-Tech straps work much better on bare skin, and it does reduce bouncing.
• Lightroom 6, for whatever reason, tends to raise the exposure levels of the photos taken with the EOS M3 if you hit the "auto" button. Either don't use the "auto" button, or manually set the exposure back after hitting it. (I use the auto button to get some of the way towards adjusting the highlights and shadows sliders without having to do it manually)

The EOS M3 is a surprisingly good piece of kit for the price. As long as you don't make the mistake of buying crappy lenses for it, you can expect superb imagery in exchange for a bit of thinking about how to shoot. It's not perfect, but nothing is. When in doubt, f/8 and be there!

Review: Bastion (PS Vita)

I picked up Bastion on the PS4, but because of cross-play and cross-buy, ended up playing it most on the PS Vita. If I had to summarize the game, I'd call it "Diablo with cute animations." That's fine. I liked Diablo 3, and it's a fine game, but for whatever reason, I found Bastion not very playable.

For one thing, the main character is balky, and doesn't move very well. You get 3 weapons, a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, and a special skill. Periodically, new weapons are introduced, and you also get a chance to upgrade what weapons you have. Unfortunately, what you do with each weapon really isn't much, and there's not much by way of getting upgrade materials, so I ended the game with heaps of money in the inventory, and not much to upgrade with.

The story was OK, but it's really just an excuse to grind a long. I did not react emotionally to the story, even when a character you're supposed to care about was kidnapped. The denouement didn't do much for me either.

My problem is that after the Witcher 3, I'm afraid I find games that hit a lesser standard to be not really worth the time. I mostly played Bastion during a long trans-pacific flight, and finished it out of a sense of obligation.

Not recommended.

Review: Deuter Kid Comfort III Baby Carrier

In 2013, I killed the Kelty FC 3.0 Child Carrier. My rule with equipment is that if I kill it once, I'll exchange it at REI. If I kill it twice, I'll shop for something better. In this case, I got a coupon which got me the Deuter Kid Comfort III for under $230, as opposed to the regular $300 price.

I just came back from a 2 week trip in Japan where I didn't bother bringing a stroller and just carried Boen around in the backpack whenever we needed to transport him. The backpack is rated for about 40 pounds of kid and 9 pounds of gear. It has a built in sun shield/rain shield, but is an open configured backpack, so don't expect it to keep your kid dry in rain without him wearing waterproof clothing. In practice, mommy will probably scream at you long before kiddie gets wet and cold.

The major problem with this pack is that it's not really made for skinny men with no hips. As you can guess, I fall into that category, so I cinch up the waist belt all the way to minimum, clip it on, and luckily that's enough that it doesn't slip. Once you do that, all the weight is on your hip and you can definitely move around with the kid all day.

As you can see, I could bend down and shoot one kid and still have the other one in the backpack. I wouldn't call it the most comfortable position in the world, but it's doable, and I was doing this multiple days during the trip. At various points during the trip, I'd have Boen in the backpack, be towing a rolling luggage, have my CPAP sling bag around my neck, and the EOS M3 kit in a bag around my neck as well, and then walk to the hotel from the train station. That I could manage it all was a testament to how comfortable this pack was.

Boen seemed very comfortable as well, falling asleep in the backpack more than once. When Boen wasn't using the bag, Bowen would try to get into the bag and sit in it. I've carried Bowen in it a couple of times (he weighs about 10 pounds more than Boen). It's OK, but it's not more comfortable than just carrying him directly on my shoulders, though it probably is more comfortable for him. Since the pack itself weighs almost 10 pounds, whenever I can carry Bowen on my shoulders I do so rather than using the pack.

The one bug is in the kick-stand. It is possible for the kick-stand to fold in under the lowest metal bar at the bottom of the pack. Then when you reach back to unfold it you'll have to yank and yank to get it to unfold so you can put the pack down. If there's any improvement feasible, I'd say that limiting the motion of the folding kick-stand to eliminate this possibility would be high on my list of priorities.

I consider baby backpacks much better than any of the alternative carrier systems. They scale up better than any front carriers, and this one provides nice features like a built in hydration setup. It's expensive, but I guess having kids is just plain expensive and there's no way around it. Recommended.

Review: EFM 11-22mm STM /4-5.6 IS

When I first bought the EOS M3 for Xiaoqin, I stuck with the prime lenses. First, the EFM 22/2 is very sharp, tiny and light, and the lack of a zoom actually simplifies camera use. It's a great lens. In Japan, however, you're frequently in constrained environments, where the potential to frame the picture by moving your feet is very limited. That calls for a wide angle lens. My preference would have been a 15mm fixed lens, but all the fixed wide-angles for the EOS M system are manual focused, and you really don't want to manual focus while looking at a screen rather than a view-finder.

The EF-M 11-22/4-5.6 STM retails for $400 in the US, but you can get it at a big camera store (Yodabashi had the lowest prices, but Bic Camera is also decent in a pinch) in Tokyo for about $320, sans tax. If you're brave, you can avoid having to go to a store by having Amazon's Japanese site ship to your hotel, but then you'll pay a little bit more, because when they're unable to verify your foreign passport they have to charge tax. The issue with buying from a Japanese camera store is that the warranty is Japan-only, though in practice Canon will typically honor the Japanese purchase. By the way, while you're at it, one of the best deals is you can get a spare battery LP-EP17 while you're at it for about $40, about 30% off from the best available US prices.

Well, the results speak for themselves: one of my favorite pictures from the trip came right out of the lens at 14mm and with it wide open (photograph by Xiaoqin Ma). Note that the lens does vignette, but the modern approach is to let the Lightroom camera profile work its magic and correct for distortion and vignetting. The camera will do it in place if you shoot in JPG mode, but I don't buy high end cameras so I can treat them like a point and shoot.

In combination with the flex-LCD screen on the back of the M3, you can get shots you just can't get on a regular point and shoot or a DSLR (11mm, f/8, ISO 100, fill-flash):

The lens filter ring size is an odd size: 55mm. You can't argue with the IS, which Canon claims to provide 3 stops of hand holdability. Note that at the longest end, at 22mm, f/5.6 is exactly 3 stops from f/2.0, which is what the non-IS prime we have is at. In practice, whenever we went to dinner, I made a habit out of switching over to the prime 22mm. While I missed the IS, stopping the motion of a kid about to do something quickly was more important. Also, when handing over the camera to someone else to shoot a picture, the lack of a zoom actually helped. (Most people are now used to fixed lenses on their smartphones and zooms confuse them)

My dislikes: having to collapse the lens and extend it for shooting. I understand that compactness helps, but the extension makes the lens feel a little flimsy. I would have happily given up a little bit of compactness.

All in all, for the price, you're getting a fancy piece of technology that grants you really wide angles on a compact camera the feels almost too small for your hands. It's not a substitute for an 11mm/2.8 prime (if Canon ever makes one, I'd seriously consider trading up), but the IS isn't a feature to sniff at, and the price is plenty reasonable, especially if you make it to Tokyo and qualify for the tax-free prices. Recommended.

Japan 2016: Thoughts and Conclusions

Japan is very kid friendly. Before we left Xiaoqin was told by people that strollers, etc. were a handful to manage in Japanese cities. We left the stroller behind, and that was a good choice, since it made buses, subways, etc. easy. What I noticed, however, was that every urinal we found in Japan was usable by Bowen. Everywhere we went, people loved both Boen and Bowen. Hotels and restaurants were happy to make accommodations, up to and including putting us in a room with a play pen, or having a nap area right next to the dining table. Our only problem was finding western style baby food (not because Boen couldn't handle Japanese-style baby food, but because the packaging was more convenient for travelers) and diapers, both of which were solved by having very helpful Japanese strangers put in extraordinary efforts on our behalf. So I'd happily travel in Japan with kids.

Bicycle travel really is a gift. I say that after this year's trip, because the contrasts between this year's trip and the 2009 Tour of Hokkaido couldn't be starker. Thinking back upon it, you might even have a hard time believing that it's the same country. My memories of the 2009 tour was gobs of hot springs, including isolated open air public springs where no one else was nearby. My memories from this year's trip is throngs of crowds at temples, except for those few days in Matsumoto. Country hostels, night markets that we happened to ride into, and wild isolated but pretty spots in Hokkaido were certainly missed.

All throughout our Hokkaido trip, I was continually told that "you're seeing the real Japan." At that time, I dismissed it to the similar (false) American creed that people in cities are not real, just the country side is real. What I now realize is that it's not just the country-side: it's that we were venturing out into a Japan that didn't speak English, where we interacted deeply with local people (despite my limited Japanese), and the terrain in a way that's denied to you when you're not traveling by bicycle or on foot.

In both cases, the Japanese are the most polite, ultra-helpful people you'll ever encounter in the world. I'll never forget the woman who took a half hour out of her day to try to help us find baby food in Shinjuku, the busiest train station in the world. She even apologized for it taking a long time! And of course, the brothers who ran Drum Kan who not only drove us to the hot spring and went in with us, but also cooked dinner and then played a Rock concert for us that evening! But as a cyclist you really do get treated differently than other tourists, and you have to interact with locals deeply in a way I never had to on this year's trip.

One of the subtlest thing in the 2009 tour was how we got cleaner and cleaner as the trip progressed. As cyclists we frequently used public baths, and were constantly exposed to how Japanese scrub and clean themselves. And when I say scrub I mean it: I swear by the time a Japanese person is done with their scrub, the entire upper layer of epidermis must have been gone! Over the 2 weeks of our bike tour, we got so inculcated with this that by the time we got home we were scrubbing like the locals. This time, because we mostly stayed at private hotels and AirBnB homes, that effect never happened. I never felt anything other than being a visitor, whereas in 2009, I truly felt like I'd traveled!

I've often said that I don't think I'll ever go back to Japan on a bike tour. The cycling is horrible compared to my beloved Bay Area: the mountain roads have too many tunnels, and views are few and far between: even on this trip, our short stint on the freeway brought better views than our travels in the mountains. The trains aren't bike friendly. Perhaps as my boys get older we'll contemplate some onsen-to-onsen hiking in some of the Japanese national parks, and that might expose them to the more cultural aspects of travel, but if that fails I might reconsider my prohibition against further cycling trips in Japan.

But of course, this time we got to experience a real Japanese Ryokan, and that's really something that's tough to arrange on a bike tour. You can't beat the service. A $800/night Ryokan in Japan provides far better service, food, and ambiance than a $2,000/night Four Seasons in Hawaii. It's expensive, but it's far better value for money, and I'm a cheap-skate of the highest order and would never consider the latter but the consider the former a nice occasional treat.

All in all, if I had the trip to do all over again, I'd spend more time in Kyoto, skip one night in Nara, and spend a day less in Tokyo. But that's all relatively minor. I'd highly recommend Sugimoto and Matsumoto castle, and spend more time on the Philosopher's Path in Kyoto.

Japan 2016: Mitaka

We got up at 6:15am, got everything packed and left the hotel, making the 7:04 Kintetsu Express to Kyoto. At Kyoto station, we bought brunch and boarded the 8:24 Tokyo bound Shinkansen. Then we got into Tokyo station and boarded the local express to Mitaka, where we got off at the wrong station exit so we could use the rest room, and then went back to find the Studio Ghibli museum bus.
Ever since he saw My Neighbor Totoro and accumulated a posse of stuffed Totoros, Bowen's been a big fan of Totoro. The museum, unfortunately, did not let you take pictures inside!

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

Though small, the museum was very well done, including a cat bus play area (which you needed to line up for), a maze, a movie theater (which your entrance ticket doubled as an entry stub), displays and examples of animation, including a stroboscope display that was just amazing. It's well worth the visit, though you probably should have planned better than I did and not pay scalper prices for tickets.
After that, we visited Ryu's AirBnB which were an hour away. Ryu had his house keeper waiting for us so we moved in. Xiaoqin was tasked with buying some items for her friend, so we went to the closest tax-free department store. Wow, women's cosmetics, it turns out are just like cars and houses --- the profit margins are so high that it's worth while for companies to pay commissioned sales people to sell them to you. I did have one last item to get from Japan, which was 64GB Vita memory cards. Those cost $100 in the US, but $75 tax free in Japan, but you have to buy 2 to get the tax deduction, so I bought 2 knowing that I could flip one if necessary.

On our last day, Ryu picked us up from our AirBnB and drove us to the train station where he showed us how to take the SkyTrain to Narita airport. It's a fast 45 minute trip via express train and got us well-rested for the hyper-stressful 9 hour trip back to the USA.

Japan 2016: Nara

We grabbed a bus to Kyoto Station and then went in to buy tickets for the express train. To my dismay, the primary ticket machines were incomprehensible, so we went into the service counter to line up. At the last minute, I saw that there was a JR Rail machine, and tried to use my American credit card to buy a ticket to Nara. That worked great, and we were soon on the express train to Nara. Once there, Google projected an 8 minute walk to the hotel, but biff'd on finding the entrance. Luckily, the entrance wasn't that far. It was too early to checkin but we could leave our luggage at the hotel.

From Japan 2016

Xiaoqin wanted to come to Nara to see Daibutsu, so we walked through the city's parks to the information center, and were then directed along a route that took in more temples, and some reindeer!

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

The temple was very crowded, with hordes of school children, bus loads full of tourists, and tour guides armed with megaphones for both crowds. We walked in slowly and gaped at the huge Buddha statue and various accompaniments before leaving to get ice cream in the heat.

From Japan 2016

After that, everyone else was too exhausted to do more walking, so I set off by myself to explore Nara. My first stop was the Kintetsu station, which was not the same as the JR Nara station. It turned out that in this part of Japan there were two major rail networks with their own stations! I wanted the bullet train from Kyoto, but the Kintetsu station was closer to our hotel, so I had to confirm that (1) yes, I had to buy my tickets from two different companies, and that (2) the 14 minute connection was realistic at Kyoto, because the Kintetsu and JR Shinkansen lines shared a common terminal separated only by a 3 minute walk. Since the Shinkansen ticket was by far the most expensive one, I then walked over to the JR Rail HQ and stood inline for multiple minutes so I could buy reserved seats that would take us to the Studio Ghibli museum on Friday. Along the way, I found a mechanical toy museum, but it was closed on Wednesday.

It rained the next day, but first we had to find more diapers for Boen. This proved to be a surprisingly difficult task, and I eventually enlisted the help of the tourist information counter at the Kintetsu train station. She walked us through 2 more drug stores before finding one! If we'd been searching for adult diapers, it would have been no problem: those were on sale everywhere! I then bought tickets for the Kintetsu rail portion of the next day's trip, and took Bowen to the mechanical toy museum in Nara.

What a great museum that was. It was fully curated, but you were allowed to play with the toys as much as you like. The tops were a lot of fun, and there was even a mini kabuki show/demonstration. Highly recommended even if you don't have kids --- in fact, I was the only person there with a child accomplice!

The day turned out to be a nice quiet day for us because of the rain. We didn't see any sights, but got to live like a local, exploring the local shopping streets, buying take out food, and in general chilling out. This was great, since the next day was an early start, as we had Studio Ghibli tickets for a 12:00pm entry in Tokyo.

Trips Index

The trips index that used to be on the navigation bar on the left of the blog has finally gotten too unwieldy. I'm replacing it with this page (which will be permalinked from the navigation bar) instead.

• Conslidated Cycle Touring Index
• 2003 Tour of the Alps
• 2005 Tour of the Alps
• 2006 Coast to Coast
• 2007 Tour of the Alps
• 2007 Virgin Islands
• 2008 Tour Across France
• 2008 Sailing in Turkey
• 2009 Australia
• 2009 Tour of Hokkaido
• 2009 Sailing and Diving in St. Vincent and the Grenadines
• 2010 Tour of the Alps
• 2010 Canadian Rockies
• 2011 Tour of the Alps
• 2012 British Virgin Islands
• 2012 Europe
• 2013 Greece
• 2014 Tour of the Alps
• 2014 Virgin Islands
• 2015 Grand Tetons and Yellowstone
• 2015 British Columbia
• 2016 Japan
• 2016 Iceland
• 2016 Tour of the Alps
• 2016 Florida Keys
• 2017 Magic Kingdom & Universal Orlando Islands of Adventure
• 2017 British Virgin Islands
• 2017 England Lakes District and the Yorkshire Moors
• 2017 Bowen's First Tour in England
• 2017 Carson Iceberg Wilderness
• 2017 Puerto Vallarta
• 2018 Bowen Winter Bike Tour
• 2018 Bowen's First Tour of the Alps
• 2018 Lassen Volcano National Park Trip
• 2018 British Virgin Islands
• 2019 Boen's First Bicycle Tour
• 2019 Mallorca, Barcelona, and Girona
• 2019 Shasta Kayaking and Cycling
• 2019 Tour Across Bavaria
• 2019 Cabo San Lucas
• 2020 Yosemite Hetch Hetchy
• 2020 Covid19 Excursion List
• 2021 Chiluana Falls Backpack
• 2021 Montana and Glacier National Park
• 2021 Antigua and Barbuda
• 2022 Barcelona, Cadaques and Girona
• 2022 Tour of the Alps
• 2022 Spanish Virgin Islands
• 2023 Canada
• 2023 Bahamas
• 2024 Tour of the Alps
• 2024 Whistler
• 2024 Yosemite
• 2024-2025 New Zealand & Fiji
• 2025 Yosemite's Half Dome
• 2025 Tour of Dolomites, Slovenia and the Alps

Japan 2016: Kyoto

The Shinkansen was a great experience, but to my surprise despite it being a mid-day trip we had a hard time getting seats in the non-reserved section. I made a note to make sure we got reserved seats on the trip back to Tokyo. Arriving in Kyoto at 2:45pm, we opted for a taxi to take us to our AirBnB home for the next 3 nights instead of the bus. The place turned out to be hard to find even for the taxi driver to find, but Yumiko, our AirBnB host was kind enough to get on a Skype call with the driver and even meet us outside the bridge in front of her house to guide the driver in the last 50 meters. Given how tricky it was I wasn't unhappy about spending the money.

By the time we were all settled in, it was 4pm, and we opted for a neighborhood stroll:

From Japan 2016

Kyoto is a gorgeous city, with lots of beautiful streets and neighborhoods. In fact, i"d say that my biggest regret about Tokyo was not walking enough. Note that according to my Garmin Vivoactive, during our 2 full days in Kyoto, we walked 9.5 miles and 9 miles respectively, most of that with Boen in the backpack on my shoulders, but I wanted to walk even more and just simply ran out of time (and also didn't want to push Bowen that hard, since the poor kid had to keep up with adults!).
That first night we walked around, explored the neighborhood, and ate dinner out, then bought breakfast for the next day. I had some ambitions about being able to eat out, but as the days progressed realized that with 2 kids, eating out was way more stressful than buying ready-to-eat packages at the supermarket that was literally 150m from the house, and much cheaper to boot!
Our first official visit the next day was at the Kiyomizu Dera, which many many people had recommended to us. The grounds were pretty, but it was crowded despite our early arrival.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

There was also a Studio Ghibli museum nearby, so Bowen got to hug a large number of Totoros. After lunch, I looked in the guidebook and discovered that nearby was a street that was said to be the prettiest street in all of Asia. Going there took us through the Gion district and another temple, but it was indeed pretty.

From Japan 2016

After that, we took a bus to a Ramen shop, and then made it home for dinner after visiting the Imperial Palace and discovering that it required reservations. Our last full day in Kyoto started at Fushima Inari, which would have been a nice climb but with kids, would have taken quite a bit longer than the projected 50 minutes. We got as high as the first place with which to get a nice view of Kyoto and turned around.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

It was indeed pretty, but once again had people, people, and more people everywhere. I think after too many decades of living in North America, I'm just no longer used to such crowded areas. After the shrine, we headed to the Nishiki food market for snacking, and then headed over to Ginkakuji, which was yet another nice looking temple. But that wasn't what was exciting about Ginkakuji: it was the Philosopher's Path that started near that temple and led through the back alleys. That's a nice city walk that surpassed all our expectations, and if I'd known it was that nice I would probably have started the day with it instead of ending our visit to Kyoto with that walk. I would prioritize it over all the temples in the city.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

The walk took us right to the supermarket near our AirBnB, so there we left the path unfinished, to grab dinner and breakfast, and prepare for our trip to Nara the next day.

Japan 2016: Matsumoto

After our customary early breakfast, we checked out and proceeded to walk to the bus stop, which would take us to a relatively small JR train station. When you're traveling with luggage, buses are actually easier than subways as you don't have to lift the luggage up and down stairs. The bus stop was also much closer than the subway station, and provided a direct connection to a JR station. Once there, I bought the train tickets for Matsumoto from a person at the single counter available there (it was a small station), and we got onto the next train for the Shinjuku station. We changed there to catch a local express train, but Xiaoqin missed the train! Fortunately, the Tokyo express train came every 5 minutes, so she simply boarded the next one and then we got onto the long distance train together with almost an hour to spare, thanks to our being super early to begin with.

Once in Matsumoto, I walked over to the rental car company with my international driver's license to pick up a rental van (with car seats), and then picked up everyone else at the train station and then drove to Matsumoto castle.

From Japan 2016

Matsumoto wasn't at peak display either, but it was much closer to the peak than Tokyo was. Matsumoto castle itself provided a beautiful backdrop for the viewing, and we got a chance to enter the castle and examine both historical artifacts, and see what it was like in an ancient Japanese castle first hand.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

The ticket for the castle also included a tour of the city museum, which wasn't nearly as impressive, but still worth a visit, given how close it was. Our stay that night was at Sugimoto Ryokan, a high end traditional luxury (read expensive) Ryokan whose service and hospitality was unmatched by any Western hotel I'd ever stayed at. For instance, the minute we parked our car in the parking lot, they'd jumped out and took our bags from us and delivered the bags into the room, even before we'd even checked in. When Bowen saw that we had gi and he didn't, the Ryokan provided him with a gi:

From Japan 2016

The room was huge, the hot springs (real hot springs!) had both indoor and outdoor rooms, and the food was nothing short of fabulous.

From Japan 2016

My Japanese instructor back in college had raved about Basashi (horse sashimi, and yes, that means it's raw!), but this was my first time trying it and wow, it was yummy! I ate everything the rest of my family couldn't finish, which unfortunately still left me quite hungry. The reason for this was obvious in hindsight: all the days in Japan, I was carrying Boen (23 pounds) on a Deuter Kid Comfort backpack (8 pounds) that was also loaded with baby food and diapers. That was at least a 35 pound load, and on some days closer to 40 pounds. Walking about 8-12 miles a day with a 35 pound load would leave me in a constant state of hunger not unlike my condition during the 2009 bike tour.
We reluctantly left Sugimoto the next day to drive towards the Shinhotaka Ropeway. On the way there, we took a detour to visit Shirahone-Onsen. The milky white character of these hot springs are apparently famous, but the place was exceedingly expensive so we didn't stay.

From Japan 2016

Not realizing that Shirahone-Onsen was on a detour, we found a tourist information center and booked a Ryokan for the night. We ended up back on the road to Shinhotaka Ropeway and being surprised that we'd seen it before! Well, we'd already paid a deposit, so we gritted our teeth, drove the rest of the way, and went up the ropeway, which did grant us nice views of the Japanese Alps.

From Japan 2016

We hiked around near the top of the ropeway, but it was mid-Spring, and there really wasn't that much hiking you could do without making an overnight trip out of it. The Ryokan we stayed that night was half the price of Sugimoto, and so not nearly as nice. But they nevertheless gave us decent food. The next day, it was cool and windy, and the hiking wasn't going to be good anyway, so we aimed to visit Obuse. On the way, however, we found a little village with cherry blossoms in full bloom!

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

That alone made the cost of the rental car worthwhile. Japanese mountain roads suck compared to European or North American ones. They're full of tunnels so you can't see any scenery, they're narrow, with no interesting views whatsoever. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover nice views from the Japanese freeways (well, toll-ways).
At Obuse, we visited the Hokusai museum as well as the Kozan Takai musuem. Both museums are small (under 90 minutes each if you don't rush), and well worth the visit. We tried some chest nut specialty food which Obuse was famous for, and then I set about looking for lodging on my smartphone. Due to a Tripadvisor app screw up, I ended up searching on booking.com and found a place in the Yudanaka Onsen area. Once I read in the guidebook that this was where the opening sequence of one of my favorite movies Baraka was filmed, I was sold!
Finding Yudanaka Onsen was easy. Finding the hotel we'd booked online wasn't. But we did eventually find it after some help, and then settled in. Yudanaka still had plenty of cherry blossoms in bloom, so in the evening before dinner we did a cherry blossom walk.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

I also did laundry in the most sophisticated coin operated laundromat I'd ever seen: each single machine could wash, rinse, spin, and dry your clothes in fully automated fashion, without you having to pour in detergent, etc. It was super expensive ($10 per load), but you could walk away and then come back in an hour without having to do anything.

From Japan 2016

The next morning, we drove the precarious single-lane road up to the Monkey Park. In Chinese, the park's name was: "Hell Valley" park. We had a limited time to visit the park as I had to drive back to Matsumoto that day, return the car, and then we all had to pile into a bus that would take us to the night's stay, but the trip was worth it, as we got to see the snow monkeys bathing in the pool, the scene which Baraka had made famous.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

We then made the drive back to Matsumoto, where I returned the car with a minimum of fuss and we found ourselves boarding the bus for ougatou. Set high in the mountains at 6000' feet, Ougatou was billed by the guidebook as a hotel above the clouds. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate and it was either clear or raining, so we didn't get the experience. Still, for the price, the service was excellent, even if the views were disappointing.

From Japan 2016

From Japan 2016

We did a bit of hiking, but it was cleary not the best season for it. Summer, Fall, or Winter would be preferable to Spring for this. We left the next day in the rain, heading back to Matsumoto for the train to Kyoto.

Japan 2016: Tokyo

Traveling with family is much different and tougher than traveling alone (or with a partner) as an adult. For instance, if you're jet-lagged as an adult, you can take sleeping pills, or worse comes to worse, wake up at 3am and go walk around a foreign city, which can be fun all by itself. You're not going to be able to do that with a toddler and infant in tow.

With that in mind, I booked a 3 night stay at Homeikan in Tokyo, hoping that it 3 days would be sufficient to get over baby jet-lag. (Bowen's baby jet-lag during the 2012 trip was a horrifying experience that I still remember today) In a similar vein, I paid one of our AirBnB hosts, Ryu, to pick us up from the airport in a mini-van. After a 9 hour flight, I expected everyone to be stressed and I did not want to deal with navigating the train system and busy streets immediately after the flight. The flight was indeed stressful for Boen, so it was a relief to see Ryu holding up a sign for our party when we exited the customs and immigration terminal.

From Japan 2016

The trip to Homeikan took a good 2 hours by car which was much longer than it would have by train (which would have been an hour or so), mostly because of unusually poor traffic conditions. On the other hand, we could see Tokyo first hand, including cyclists without helmets, the Skytree, and ask questions of Ryu. Bowen whined a lot about having no water to drink, but that would have been true on the train as well. Once settled in the hotel, we went out for a quick dinner, got a quick bath, and then went to sleep as late as we could.

Going from California to Japan was the easy direction, but we still all woke up around 5:00am, and by the time breakfast came, we were hungry. 

From Japan 2016

We then went to Ueno park, mostly because it was close. We knew from reports that the Cherry Blossom season was over. But what was left was remarkably good, and still quite pretty:

From Japan 2016

What was remarkable was that whenever the wind blew, we'd get cherry blossoms coming down on us from the trees. We would later be told that this was 花吹雪, Hana Fubuki.

After that we went to the Nishiki market for lunch. The wait was over an hour, and we later found out that this was normal! The only time to go when it wouldn't be crowded would be in the morning, right after breakfast. Well, I wasn't about to do that since the Ryokan did feed us quite well.

From Japan 2016

Over-ambitious by this point, we went to Akhibahara, but discovered that all the big shops that would do tax-free discounting required you to bring your passport, and we'd left ours safely at the hotel. Everyone was tired by now, so we headed back to Homeikan. Poor Bowen fell asleep waiting for his ramen dinner!

From Japan 2016

The little guy had walked all over Tokyo with us (I was carrying his little brother in the backpack, so I couldn't carry him), and according to my watch, we'd walked 10 miles in total. No wonder he was tired.

Ask anyone what the best antidote for jet-lag was, and you'll hear that sunlight and exercise are the best. We didn't get a huge amount of sunlight, but judging by my hips and shoulders, we did get quite a bit of exercise. So rather than a long walk through a park, we took the subway to the Tokyo Skytree.

From Japan 2016

From there, you got nice panoramic views of Tokyo, but unfortunately, it wasn't the clearest of days so we couldn't see Mt. Fuji.

From Japan 2016

We had lunch in the area at a famous beef tongue shop, visited the Studio Ghibli store, and then went to Shinjuku, where the intention was to look at the street scene. Instead, we got side-tracked into buying baby food. We got help from a very nice lady, and ended up at a department store. Having brought my passport, I paid a visit to Yodabashi Camera, and purchased an EF-M 11-22/4-5.6 STM IS for the EOS M3, as well as a spare battery. As a foreigner on a short visit, camera equipment is one of the few things that are cheaper in Tokyo than they would be in the USA, though even in those cases you should still do some comparison shopping in advance.

Exhausted, we went back to the hotel early and went to bed early, as we had a train to catch the next morning to Matsumoto.

Japan 2016 Index

For this year's Spring Break, we opted to visit Japan. Since we had to orient around Bowen's school schedule, we weren't able to pick the optimal dates to visit Kyoto/Tokyo during peak cherry blossom season. Because of that, in addition to those two cities, we picked Matsumoto, where we could rent a car and use that to explore and find cherry blossoms to look at. This is the index page for the trip. Unlike my cycling trips, I won't do a day-by-day breakdown but simply discuss each city/region:

• Tokyo
• Matsumoto
• Kyoto
• Nara
• Final Day in Tokyo
• Thoughts and Conclusions

Equipment reviews will also be provided, as well as recommendations for future trips.

Review: Hitman GO (Android)

I don't usually play Android games, but Hitman GO was an exception and well worth it. I never played any of the Hitman series, but that didn't matter. The game's laid out like a board game, where for each move you make the other characters on the board move. Those other characters are controlled by an algorithm, so each level is essentially a puzzle where you figure out the sequence of moves that will achieve your objective.

Most of the time your objective will involve either getting a briefcase, killing everyone on the board, or not killing anyone on the board, as well as getting to the exit. The game comes with 6 different sets of puzzles, and to move from one set to the next requires that you score points by achieve those objectives. What's great about the game is that Square Enix did not require micropayments to move forward: if you achieve 2 out of 3 objectives for each puzzle, you will be able to unlock the entire game. What I did not realize was that to achieve all 3 objectives for each puzzle is not possible without playing through the puzzle twice.

The game also comes with a hint system should you get stuck. The puzzles, however, are fairly straightforward and I wouldn't have used it except that I was playing with the UI and found it by accident on the last mission.

The game does drain the battery on my smartphone, and on my Moto G had a significant startup time. Once started, each puzzle takes you about 2-5 minutes, which is perfect for a game you play at a bus stop. For $1-2, the game is recommended and worth your while. Because there are no micro-transactions even for hints (not true of the follow-up Lara Croft GO), it is safe to give it to your children to play.

Review: WingZ

I was a big fan of WingZ for a couple of rides. The service lets you book a trip to the airport, minus the hassle of ride shares like Super Shuttles, which are either expensive, or Uber, which doesn't let you pre-book a trip at all. (Not to mention I could never get Uber to work for me on the smartphone)

Then I got a driver who not only didn't show, but only told me that he wasn't going to show 10 minutes before my flight departed. I'd ended up driving the family to the airport at the last minute and paying a daily rate for a multi-week trip.

Now, since the drivers aren't employees, I don't really blame WingZ, but surprised me was the completely unsympathetic response of the organization, given that I'd documented all the interchange between us and our driver, and the driver's pathetic excuse "Not comfortable driving in the rain."

Contrast this with AirBnB's response to our issue in 2012 of getting charged a cleaning fee that wasn't appropriate. With this kind of attitude, I strongly urge friends and family not to use WingZ, and I don't expect them to be around for the long haul regardless.

NOT RECOMMENDED.

Review: Matterhorn

My standard for Vietnam War books is The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. But Matterhorn might very well replace that. Matterhorn is the name of a firebase during the Vietnam war, and the novel follows the travails of Bravo company, amongst which is one Lieutenant Mellas, a college educated Marine Corps officer who for idealistic reasons, opted not to go for deferment and ended up in the infantry instead.

One by one, you get to know other members of the company, officers, NCOs, machine-gunners and yes, the guy who's only got a few weeks left to go on his tour and is dreaming of going back to the girlfriend he left behind in Thailand. The story is good, with Bravo company getting screwed over by senior military officers who're trying to make themselves look good at the expense of the men they command.

If you're wondering why a Vietnam War novel might be relevant to a software engineer, I think this short passage might change your mind:

“You know why we’re really strung out in this fucking death canyon?” Mellas didn’t know, so he just grunted. “Because Fitch doesn’t know how to play the fucking game. That’s why. He’s a good combat leader. I’d literally follow him to my death. But he’s not a good company commander in this kind of war. He got on Simpson’s bad side because he got his picture in the paper too often and never gave Simpson credit, which by the way he doesn’t deserve, but that’s the point. The smart guy gives the guy with the power the credit, whether he deserves it or not. That way the smart guy is dangling something the boss wants. So the smart guy now has power over the boss.” (Loc. 3841-47)

Over and over again, the novel doesn't flinch from the power politics that are played at high levels in a corporation (and in this case, the Marine Corps is just as functional or dysfunctional as any large corporation). At one point, Bravo company is tasked with digging trenches and building bunkers to defend a hill --- only to be told to abandon it to prepare for another assault elsewhere in Vietnam. Whereupon the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) promptly take over those defenses and Bravo company is then tasked with assaulting the very defenses they had built from a disadvantageous position. The poor Google engineers who built the very first version of Google Drive were similarly told to abandon it, only to have to launch again after Dropbox proved that the market existed and is pretty lucrative must have felt very similar to the marines in Bravo company. In fact, just as some of the high performing officers were unfairly blamed by their commanding officers for incompetence, I myself heard a Senior Staff Engineer at Google blame the former tech lead for Google Drive for failure to push against the killing of the project.

There's a passage where Mellas thinks about the Colonel in charge of the operation:

Mellas would probably have said that Blakely didn’t have what it takes, but Mellas would have been wrong. Blakely would have performed a lower-level job just as well as he performed his current job—competently, not perfectly, but well enough to get the work done and stay out of trouble. He’d make the same sorts of small mistakes, but they’d have a smaller effect. Instead of sending a company out without food, he might place a machine gun at a disadvantage. But the Marines under him would make up for mistakes like that. They’d fight well with the imperfect machine-gun layout. The casualties would be slightly higher, with slightly fewer enemy dead, but the statistics of perfection never show up in any reporting system. A victory is reported with the casualties it takes to secure that victory, not the casualties it would have taken if the machine gun had been better placed. There was nothing sinister in this. Blakely himself would not be aware that he’d positioned the machine gun poorly. He’d feel bad about his casualties for a while. But reflecting on why or for what wasn’t something Blakely did. Right now the problem before him was to engage the enemy and get the body count as high as possible. He wanted to do a good job, as any decent person would, and now he’d finally figured out a way to do so. He might actually get to use the entire battalion in a battle all at one time, an invaluable experience for a career officer.  (Loc. 6174-84)

That's the reality of management in a big organization, and an inherent limitation in the data-driven management techniques used today. Suboptimal code (or machine gun placement) sure as heck matters to the marines who get killed because of it (and to the engineers who have to maintain or work-around the problems), but it's not visible at all in the aggregate level to senior management. As a result, incompetent managers with serious political skills get promoted far more frequently than competent managers who lack such skills. In a high quality organization (like the Marine Corps or Google), the rank-and-file who get hired (or enlisted) are so good that they can make even incompetent managers look great. In fact, in certain circumstances, high casualties, constant war-rooms, and constant enemy engagement can make such managers look like stars, even though a better manager could have avoided all of the above. (And no, I have no idea whether the Marine Corps or Google's rank and file are really that far above average nowadays, but back when I was at Google, the average engineer was really really good, and in many cases much better than the average manager)

I'm at risk at this point of making this novel sound like a treatise in office politics, self-promotion, and lessons in how to make yourself (and your boss) look good rather than a great novel.  Let me try to disabuse you of that. It's a great novel. It's got great characters, a transparent prose style, an interesting plot and setting. It explains why the North Vietnamese beat the Americans despite the latter's overwhelming technology advantage: the terrain and weather negated most of the advantages the Marines had over their enemies, and organizational dysfunction took care of the rest.

But at this point, the novel has won so many awards and accolades (it took 30 years to write and publish!) that anything I can say about the conventional aspects of the novel can be (and probably has been) better said elsewhere by professional reviewers. The novel delivers everything a novel should deliver, and provides lessons and entertainment in spades. I paid $2 during a Kindle sale for it, but knowing what I know now would not hesitate to pay full freight. Buy it, read it, and enjoy the heck out of it. And as you do read it, the management/political lessons it provides might turn out be really useful in your career. That makes this book highly recommended.

Review: Beyond the Tiger Mom

Most parenting books are a joke, especially ones like Beyond the Tiger Mom. They ignore statistics, don't examine best practices from research, and are written pretty badly, never taking a paragraph to say something when 10 pages from a chapter would do.

I picked up Beyond the Tiger Mom because it was written by a woman (Maya Thiagarajan) who'd moved with her family from the USA to Singapore. She was an English major, of Indian descent, and also a school teacher, which gave her an insider's perspective on both educational systems. Singapore's an interesting case, since I have personal knowledge of the system from having been educated within it. From a global perspective, Singapore's educational system competes successfully with the best schools anywhere. One of the board members of an elite private school was telling me that the school he sat on the board on had the largest number of perfect scores on an economics test in the US, and was globally only second to "some school in Singapore." I immediately guessed it was Raffles Junior College my alma mater), and he confirmed it.

The issue with the Singaporean system for teaching math (or almost any other subject, for that matter), is that it's extremely exam and test focused. This is great for producing awesome scores, and you really can't argue with the results. What it's not so good at is producing motivated students who can reason their way to a novel solution. Thiagarajan acknowledges this in the book, but also points out that in aggregate, the Singaporean approach produces more students who are more capable than US:

East Asian countries with standardized exam systems tend to benefit students at the bottom of the economic ladder. In his provocative book Re-Evaluating Education in Japan and Korea: Demystifying Stereotypes, Professor Hyunjoon Park of the University of Pennsylvania uses PISA and TIMSS results to show that the bottom students in Japan and Korea 31 perform very well on these tests compared to low performers in other nations. While the top students in America are on par with the top students in Korea and Japan, the bottom students in America are far behind the bottom students in Korea and Japan. Similarly, I am repeatedly amazed that every child on the island of Singapore, whether rich or poor, is required to take the extremely rigorous and conceptual PSLE math exam. (Kindle Loc. 1503-10)

 To some extent, math at the primary school level is fairly straightforward: you can pretty much memorize the multiplication table, learn the algorithms, and then do well on the exams. At the higher levels where there's a need to understand the concepts is where the exam-focused approach falls apart, though in recent years Singapore has improved dramatically with the introduction of word based math problems, where the student is expected to translate a real-world problem into math and then solve the problem that way.

The real issue with Singaporean-style education comes from reading. Thiagarajan observes that Singaporean-style English education pretty much ignores reading for pleasure:

“The problem with Chinese kids is that they don’t think about reading books at all. Books are to be studied for exams, but the concept of reading for pleasure hasn’t really taken off in Asia.” (Loc. 1053-54)

To some extent this is endemic in American culture as well, since the statistics are that the average American reads about 1 book a year after leaving college. But the tradition of Dad reading to kids before bed-time is embedded deeply into American culture, while there's no such tradition in Asian culture. (And it was very rare to see a Singaporean adult reading while waiting for the bus at bus stops --- while if you board an American domestic flight you'll see Kindles pretty much everywhere)

 Thiagarajan also points out that pretty much no Singaporean students ever get unstructured outdoor play time, leading to the highest myopia rates in the world:

When I first arrived in Singapore, I was simultaneously impressed and perplexed by the number of sparkling swimming pools and well-manicured public parks and playgrounds in the city. These spaces are beautiful, making this little island feel like a resort, a paradise for children. Nonetheless, these spaces are often empty, particularly during the week; if there are children splashing or running about, they tend to be children who attend international schools— “expat kids.” Where are all the local Singaporean children? There’s an easy answer to this question: they are at tuition. Or they are at home studying. Or they are in special classes, learning to develop additional talents and skills. (Loc. 1664-70)

Of course, the tropics are notoriously un-fun for outdoor activities. I definitely didn't ever see the point in hiking or camping until I arrived in the US.

All this portrays a relentlessly competitive society, with an eye on practical achievements.

Chinese teacher I interviewed told me, “every Chinese mom’s worst nightmare is that her child will decide to be an artist.” (Loc. 2651-52)

In other words, a lot like the San Francisco Bay Area, where competitive parenting is the primary sport most parents engage in. The book's an entertaining read, and it has lots of pages where Thiagarajan gives you tips on parenting (not that she has any research or special expertise to provide). It's recommended but for entertainment value, rather than for her recommendations on how your child can be better cultivated. And boy am I glad I left Singapore, and I'm not unhappy that my 2 sons have a chance to enjoy a little bit more childhood than I did.

Review: The Grace of Kings

I'm a huge fan of Ken Liu's short stories. The guy's pretty much managed to win an award with every story he published, and deservedly so. I was nervous, however, about him writing a novel, and a fantasy novel at that. So I checked The Grace of Kings out of the library instead of rushing to buy it.

The prose style of The Grace of Kings is that of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The characters are larger than life in much the same fashion, but with more fantastical/mechanical devices, including airships, submarines, and battle-kites. It's fun reading, evocative of that ancient Chinese novel but telling its own story. The characters don't really develop as such, but rather, do what the plot demands of them. As a result, brothers betray each other, wives play political games that they later regret, and generals commit egregious tactical blunders for no particular reason.

While it's not a waste of time to read it, I suspect I'll be checking out the next volume (yes, it's book 1 of a trilogy) out of the library rather than rushing to buy and read it.

Review: Sapiens - A Brief History

Knowing that I was heading off for Japan, I picked up a couple of books during an Amazon digital sale. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was one of them. It's an extremely readable book and covers human pre-history, the development of agriculture, and the rise of technological society.

The grand themes of the book are a lot of fun, and the book is written in a compellingly readable manner, such that even when it was covering material I'd already read elsewhere, I didn't feel put upon going over it again. For instance, on the idea of memes:

People easily understand that ‘primitives’ cement their social order by believing in ghosts and spirits, and gathering each full moon to dance together around the campfire. What we fail to appreciate is that our modern institutions function on exactly the same basis. Take for example the world of business corporations. Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales. (Kindle Loc. 473-77)

 Along the way, Harari manages to dispel such myths about the agricultural revolution:

The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped discs, arthritis and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word ‘domesticate’ comes from the Latin domus, which means ‘house’. Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens.  (Kindle Loc. 1289-94)

The agricultural revolution was basically a trap: by making wheat, rice, or other staples more productive, the descendants of foragers were fooled into settling next to the fields, producing more children (a success for their genes) but dooming them into a life of toil and ill-health compared to the easy lives the foragers had.

Harari points out that mass extinctions are also not something recent:

Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology. (Kindle Loc. 1213)

Once Harari gets to civilization, the history is more serious but no less interesting. He points out that monotheism isn't necessarily more sophisticated than polytheism or dualism:

So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief. (Loc.3417-19)

He points out that the rise of science and enlightenment in recent centuries has been a break from the past in terms of the acknowledgement of ignorance. Prior to modern science, human cultures have always thought that all that was knowable or worth knowing was already known. You didn't ask how old the earth was by consulting empirical sources --- you read the bible carefully to try to figure it out. In traditional human cultures (much as is described in the Lord of the Rings), the past was always better, ancient traditions had all the answers, and questions that were not answered by tradition weren't worth asking. It is the breaking of this tradition that held the secret to scientific progress.

All in all, the book's very much worth reading and very entertaining. Recommended.

Review: Amplitude (PS4)

I backed Amplitude (PS4) as a kickstarter project despite having no prior experience with the PS2 game. I guess the Harmonix name on the sticker sucked me in. Like all music/rhythm game, this is a game where the story doesn't matter, even in campaign mode.

You essentially fly a space ship with notes flying towards you. Each song is represented by a series of tracks, and you get to pick which track's rhythm you'd like to work on. Each track only has 3 notes (left, middle, right), and those are played using the face buttons on the controller (square, triangle, circle). Pushing those buttons at the right time, fires the space ship's blaster at the note and it finishes. Complete a measure successfully and the track goes away, and you can use the directional buttons or joystick to move to another track. The last face button (cross) activates various special abilities which you unlock as you successfully play a measure.

As far as music games go it's very abstract. It's an entertaining diversion, but by far my biggest problem is that the songs aren't very memorable. Or at least, I didn't feel that any of them were interesting: it all sounded like random techno pop to me, which made it less than motivational for me to consider playing it through on a harder difficulty.

I can see how this game could have been considered ground-breaking back before Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and it's nice to be able to just use the controller instead of a special device. I'm afraid I got way more out of Resogun than this. Not recommended.