Now it’s just getting silly
I was in Belfast in Northern Ireland briefly this week, for the first time.
Nice place, but I wish it had been under different circumstances.
And then, the evening of my first full day there, I got food poisoning or norovirus (the latter seems more likely).
Really felt like the last straw.
I have a couple more days in the UK, then I’m heading back to Sendai.
And I got some more bad news today.
How do you keep going when everything is too much? I’m actually quite familiar with this.
You just do. You keep going because there is no alternative. You wake up, and you do the next thing. And the next. And maybe, after a while, it gets better.
It always gets better if you let it.
Take care of yourselves out there. Spring is coming.
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The Forum
Speaking of which, the Forum is doing well (40,428 posts so far). The forum rules are here. In essence, they are:
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Here are the latest active threads:
This week’s books
I am still on my Terry Pratchett binge! Bought all of his Discworld books on Kindle and am currently reading Maskerade (18/41).
I also just bought Gary Stevenson’s book The Trading Game. Really enjoying his video content recently, so looking forward to reading this.
This week’s links
- Derek on Times Car Share: I like the idea but have never used it: Times
- I’m not at all interested in this based on what I know at the moment: World Expo Preparations Coming Down to the Wire
- A scary prospect for manshon owners: The high cost of letting Japan’s condos crumble
- I am not good with spiders larger than a couple of mm: An Arachnophobe Pays Homage to the Spider
- Japan is going to look quite different in the future: Like it or not, the ‘immigrants next door’ are coming to Japan
- More shinkansen shenanigans: Kyoto Says Hold On
- Martin with some updates: Time in the Market
- MMM is back! An article about the current state of the stock market: Wow, have you seen the stock market lately?
- This game (and movie?) sounds interesting: The Exit 8
- This was great (YouTube): Is Passive Income The Answer?
- Enjoyed this Penny Arcade cartoon:
What do you think? Anything interesting in there?
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Best wishes to you, this storm will pass. It’s just hard to see when you’re getting hit by lemon-sized hail. All the best to you!
Ben, sorry to hear you are having a rough time recently.
Sending my best wishes and hope for things to taker a brighter turn.
Hope you get through this unscathed Ben, and are now on the up!
#6. Being from Gifu, the shinkansen running through Maibara (Shiga) is a lot more convenient. At the moment if you are coming from Aichi, Mie, Shizuoka or Gifu you can catch a train to Maibara but then have to take a rapid to Tsuruga and then change to the shinkansen again. If the Maibara route it chosen it would make things so much easier and would make no difference to people in Kyoto, Osaka and people in West Japan. It would also cost a lot less to build too and be finished much earlier. The only downside is that areas in Northern Kyoto and West Fukui would miss out. These places are beautiful and could really do with a chance to gain more residents and tourists. At the same time though, for a purely selfish reason I would rather see these places left as they are – beautiful, quiet and with few tourists ruin it for eveyone.
Sorry, but from Hokuriku, a line as direct to Osaka as possible is far, far better.
Anything else is just those other places wanting to huff up their chests and say “include me, too, stop at our town, too.”
Which is the essence of the choice–do you what a slow, stilted trip to Osaka with bullshit stops along the way at places that think they’re important (but aren’t), or do you just want to get to Osaka?
Maibara has nothing going for it. It just happens to be where train lines have met in the past. It’s the past, it’s last generation, and hopefully not the future.
I wouldn’t say far better. As long as it’s direct and you don’t have to change trains, it’s an extra 20 minutes via Maibara. But if you’re going from say Kanazawa it would mean you could go directly to Kansai AND Tokai (Nagoya, Gifu, Shizuoka) via shinkansen.
That sounds better to me and I’m sure a lot of people would agree.
The Fukui route will stop at Obama and Kyoto, the Maibara route Maibara and Kyoto. So the number of stops would be the same. Maibara is right next to Nagahama and Hikone which are big tourist spots. Obama has beautiful beaches and some other points. But the thing is both of these are stations that not many people will get off at anyway.
So really the main choice is (excluding cost) getting to Kyoto/Osaka 20 mins earlier or being able to go to more places via shinkansen.
There’s an argument for both I’d say but via Maibara does give more options and makes Hokuriku ultra convenient.
Hey, just wanted to say thanks for still posting the Monday Read even though you’re having a tough time. I, and many other readers really appreciate it.
Thanks Jim! One of the things that keep me going.
Hope things start trending positively for you!
Read the spider article. I’d previously read that if you removed spiders from the ecosystem all life on earth would perish.
For me. It’s still a chance I’m prepared to take..
Ha, ha, me too. I was interested enough to check out the book, but not enough to buy it 😅
Thanks for the Monday read as usual Ben. Hope things pass, and life gets better soon.
I would love to read the Japan Times article about condos but it’s behind a pay wall. Does anyone know another way to access it?
Sometimes you can get in by searching for the title online. But it seems to depend on how many JT articles you have read recently.