New Climbing Bag and Knee

hey all,

So over the weekend, I bought a new backpack that I intend to use as a general hiking bag, but mostly as a bag for hauling rock climbing gear when Michi and I go rock climbing.

Below is a where I mimic the style of backpack reviewers elsewhere on YouTube. Michi insisted that we make the video and it was pretty fun. The other thing you need to know is that my poor wife has endured about two or three months of me talking and rambling about Backpack X, Backpack Y, and Backpack Omega for hours and hours.





For those interested in keeping track, here are all my outdoors backpacks. Yes, I am something of a "backpack baka" as Michi has started calling me ("idiot for backpacks").

The 70L is perfect for 3-5 day hikes.
The 46L has been my go-to bag for rock climbing trips since 2004, but has since been relegated mostly to grocery shopping and trips where the 30L is too small, but the 70L is too big.
The 30L is my one mistake. I bought it originally as a pack for my laptop, but as it is a pack designed mainly for skiers and alpine climbers, it is really inconvenient to use.
The 18L was a gift from Michi. Perfect for day trips, and it has also seen use on the rock wall when Michi and I have gone multipitching.

And yes, I do have a small messenger bag for daily use outside of work and a small backpack for my daily commute to and from work, and OK, yes, I do have another backpack on the way (a replacement for my current work bag).

The sad news is that a week ago, I messed up my right knee during a rock climbing trip. I've got a couple anti-inflammatory drugs, and I've got a few knee braces, but due to the language barrier, it was a little hard for me to understand what the nature of the injury was. From the doctor's explanation, it sounds like my patella is pulled too far to the interior side of my leg when I bend my knee. This is due to a muscle imbalance, which makes sense because I played soccer as a right-footer and I mainly swam breaststroke: both motions call for swinging the leg in towards or across the body with force. During a high step on the rock wall, too much stress was put on some of the ligaments in the knee, and there was pain and a ton of popping. Now, it hurts to bend it and walk and put weight on it. The medicine and the brace are helping, but I'm worried about the length of the recovery time.

Cheers,

Hardcore Characters and Leveling in Diablo 3

hey all,

So I should probably put this under the Games page, but it doesn't allow me to do individual posts there, so it is here instead.

One of the games I picked up in December was Diablo 3, and since January I've had a chance to sit down and play it quite a bit. Two things have been bugging me about it, though, so I thought I'd get my thoughts about it here. In Diablo 3, you cannot customize the appearance of your character. Your male barbarian will always have the same face, hair, body shape, tattoos, voice, etc as everyone else's male barbarian. So none of those things really affect the gameplay, but they influence your connection to the character. Also, you cannot level your character like you can in Skyrim, Dark Souls, Fallout, Final Fantasy, etc. As you kill monsters and complete quests, your character will level up. But you cannot choose to increase your health or any other stats: those increase by themselves. Further, you cannot decide what abilities you would like to start using, nor which ones to improve. For each character class, these are pre-determined. At level 2, you will receive abilities X,Y, and Z, and at level 3 the abilities W, V, U will be unlocked. If you still want to use X,Y, and Z, fine.

The second thing about Diablo 3 has more to do with the pain I've caused myself by playing the game. In Diablo 3, you can create what they call "Hardcore" characters: these are characters that have the same number of lives as you and me: one. If they die, all the time you spent playing them is all you can have. If they die, their gold is gone. Their equipment is gone. If you want to play as that character again, too bad. You can delete that character and start a new one if you wish, but you won't be able to play as that exact one again. So far, this has happened to me 3 times, and it really sucks. While you are playing, it gives every battle an extra kick because you could permanently die, but when you do, then you're just left thinking: but I liked that character, the one I spent all those hours battling demonspawn with, I don't want to use another character.

The problem seems to be difficulty ramping. You can only level up really quickly if you play monsters that are close to your level, but that means they could kill you. If you want to be safe, you need to go back to old areas of the map and grind by killing the same monsters over and over again so that you can increase your level beyond that of the monsters in the new area. This is really boring and also takes more time, but there is less risk of your character permanently dying.

So for the rest of the game, I'm going to use regular characters that have infinite lives, and if I beat the game, I will come back and use the hardcore characters I've already created.

Anyway, tomorrow is the first day of work in 2014, but there will only be a few special classes, so I want to use the rest of the time to plan and prep the rest of the month.

Cheers,

New Years Trip

hey all,

Happy New Year!

Michi and I took a short trip over to Hachijo Island, which even though it is almost 300km to the south of Tokyo, it is still technically part of the city.



The original plan was to head to our hotel, drop our stuff off, and then use a rental car to get around the island. However, for reasons I won't get into, we weren't able to rent a car, and had to use taxis, buses, rental bikes, and our own feet to get around.

Our first destination was Mt. Nishi, which is on the north side of the island. It was a very short hike, only one hour to the top, about one hour to hike around the crater, and another hour back down. Still, the crater itself was pretty interesting and it was a fun hike.

We had dinner at the hotel, which was delicious (a mix of seafood and Italian dishes), and then we watched There's Something About Mary before going to bed early.

We woke up around 6AM so we could use the rental bikes to find a nice place to watch the sunrise. After that, we headed over to the south side of the island using the bikes. Over there, we visited a waterfall and an area with black sand.

And that is basically it. We visited an onsen as well, but after hanging out at the hotel after the long bike ride, we took a shuttle back to the airport and back to Tokyo proper.

Cheers,

Work, Games,Vacation At Last, Cleaning

hey all,

On Christmas I finally cornered my boss and got the schedule for the 26th straightened out. Both Christmas and the 26th went pretty smoothly.

I've spent the last couple of days relaxing and helping Michi clean the apartment. Since I cooked a lot of daigaku imo over the last year (a kind of fried sweet potato dish that is smothered in a sugary syrup), this caused the kitchen counter, stove top, kitchen walls, and especially the kitchen exhaust fan and hood to become coated in grease. Guess who got to clean it up?

When I first tried, I used hot water and dish soap, but that just made my hands greasy, and didn't take any grease off the fan. So I figured: "Maybe some alcohol might cut the grease?" Turns out either alcohol is no good or the alcohol I used was just too weak. Finally, I went online and found a post about using boiling water and baking soda. I gave that a try, and was actually able to get the grease off really quickly and easily.

So by now, we've vacuumed, scrubbed, and dusted the apartment pretty thoroughly.

Last weekend, I also had a chance to go to Akihabara with one of my friends and I picked up a bunch of older games: Mass Effect 2 and 3, The Last of Us, Portal 2, and Diablo 3. I know that seems extravagant, but I bought them with my "Game Fund" money: my saved up 500 Yen coins.

I've beaten The Last of Us already, but I'll be going back sometime in the future to get some items I missed on my first play through. I also started Portal 2 and Diablo 3. Portal 2 is an amazing puzzler, and as with most puzzlers, you feel like a genius when you finally solve one of them. Diablo 3 is also pretty good. So far, I've created 3 characters: a wizard, a barbarian, and a monk. The wizard and the barbarian are both "hardcore" characters, which means if your character dies while playing, they are dead for good. I started the monk first, so I'm furthest along with her, but the barbarian is pretty close behind.

Tomorrow, Michi and I head out for a two-day trip south of Tokyo, so my next post will be in 2014.

Cheers,

Small Trips, Big Trips, Work, and Games

hey all,

Michi and I took a few small trips this month, and during New Year's we've got a bigger one planned to one of the islands far south of Tokyo Bay.

I've only gone to one kendo lesson this month. The others were on Saturday, and I just have the hardest time getting up and getting motivated for them. At least for the Sunday lessons I have a day to recover from my Friday English classes (which are suicidally depressing: "OK, X, what's your answer for number 3?" "There are three products in North America: U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico." "Is U.S.A. a product? No? Canada? Mexico? Then why did you pick product for your answer?").

Work this month has been tough. The boss has been pretty absentee, and one of our teachers was gone due to stomach problems for a few days. There seems to be a lot of confusion about the last day of work, Dec. 26th, and it doesn't help that the boss is saying different things to different people and then disappearing without having to face the consequences of her capriciousness. There is also a bit of stress about recordings and printing the materials before the holidays start.

I've kinda lost it with going back to some of my older games, like Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls, and Skyrim. After you've put hundreds of hours into them, they really do lose some of their luster. I think this weekend I will go and buy The Last of Us, which I've heard good things about. I haven't picked up a PS4 yet, but there are still a few games for the PS3 that I want to play first (like Dark Souls 2, which comes out in March 2014), and I can't really justify keeping two systems in the apartment.

Cheers,

Loans, New Year's

hey all,

So I have almost finished paying off my student loans. One more payment in January and the college loan monkey will be off my back for good! So I'll be able to make something of a financial new start around the time of the new year.

Jobwise, things are so-so. All the teachers are really busy at the moment with extra lessons, and the monthly chores of getting material and recording finished on time. In terms of behavior, one of the morning classes in particular has been giving all the teachers lots of trouble for the last few weeks, and I'm pretty fed up with my final morning class about their disrespectful attitudes during reading time. If they keep it up on Monday, on Tuesday they will only have writing and answering questions for 30 minutes, and then on to the usual grammar.

After spending almost the entire year on a fantasy binge, I decided to shake things up and read some sci-fi. The series I started is pretty good so far, but it is three books of 1,200 pages each.

Cheers,

Pass!

hey all,

So I've been sick on and off with a cold the last month. But today I have some happy news: I took the exam for kendo grade 1 today and passed !

My teachers said I made a few mistakes in the kata (those pesky memorized forms), but they said I made a few good strikes in my matches. They'd like me to do my best to pass the first dan this coming June. (I have technically passed the first kyu, which is a lower ranking system.)

Cheers,