Reflections of a stormy petrel

Haven't been doing much exciting, largely staying home and reading Cherryh. Had an illness scare a couple days ago, throat feeling off and me preferring high temperature, but it broke after a day.

I was running low on cash, went out to ATMs tonight, and discovered not all convenience stores here have ATMs, neither the Family Mart nor the 7-11. Other branches may, but not those. Used Hilife, later found my supermarket has the same ATM, closer.

At the supermarket I saw someone bike up, simply prop his bike against the wall, and go in. This shouldn't be surprising given all the unlocked bikes I've seen, but still.

Science! I'd suspected my old fridge was warm, confirmed it with my Aranet (and found that Bluetooth can penetrate the fridge walls), and reported the 10 C temps to my host. Yesterday I got a new fridge, with a warning to let the compressor oil settle for 4 hours before turning it on; I'd have liked a warning about that so I could run down my food. But it's on now, and indeed much colder, I've measured as low as 1.5 C near the bottom on max power, though it's a bit warmer right now. Warmest on the upper shelf of the fridge door, as high as 7 C there. I've supplemented the Aranet with some cups of water at various levels in the fridge, so I can stick my instant meat thermometer in and measure them.

I bought a package of Taiwanese sausage tonight, only realizing at home that it's raw. I started microwaving a couple, then switched to the rice cooker's steamer basket; less likelihood of explosion. I may finally break out the hot plate for the rest.

Have I mentioned that I'm around the corner (and across an intersection) from a Taoist temple here? Yesterday (Saturday) at 6 AM I'd heard some music, and later fireworks, but hadn't gone out. Tonight around 8:40 PM I heard it again, and quickly went out. Album

I don't know if a procession had actually marched around some distance, but what I saw when I got there was like the end of a small parade, with people in giant costumes, the portable tabernacle or whatever, a barrel of fire (did not photograph well, there's just a glow). Also a brief attack of fireworks, some line of things on the ground that were set off, loud bright and smokey.

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I looked at more bicycles today, and saw some with Japan's over-wheel center kickstands. At first I thought they had O-locks too, but I didn't see any more, and now I wonder if I mistook rim/caliper brakes for an O-lock. I saw two bikes that were locked to something, but most are freestanding; maybe half have a cable lock through a wheel, so someone can't trivially ride off with it; the rest have no visible lock, maybe just counting on low crime and looking like rusty pieces of shit.

I went to a pho stall and pointed at a photo that looked nice. It turned out to have "duck blood tofu", blood coagulated into big cubes with a consistency like that of tofu. I ate one cube and part of the other. It was not deeply repulsive; if I hadn't known it was blood I might have eaten it without blinking. Knowing... I decided to stop and see if my stomach would revolt from new food or a surplus of iron.

I forget if I've talked about it in the travel series, but a distinctive feature of Japanese housing is balconies. I think basically every unit above ground level has one, even if it's shallow, a space (1) to hang your laundry outside and (2) so someone can install and maintain your heat pump compressor without risk of death or needing special safety equipment.

I haven't been looking up much, distracted by traffic and shops, or blocked by covered walkways, but today I did look up (starting from a park.) Album. And no, balconies are not ubiquitous here, and compressors are often just extruded from walls, with no obvious access.

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