ack, i think my hard drive is dying. files keep getting corrupted, and sometimes when i start the computer it says no bootable hard drive found but if i retry enough times it usually comes up, and chkdsk always finds a bunch of lost clusters and whatever. uncool. i could maybe buy another laptop hard drive here (yay expensive) but i'd need to install win2k on it, and if i buy a copy here it will be in japanese. so i'd need someone to mail me an american win2k disk. ugh. im gonna see if dell offers technical support over here (good thing we got the extended warranty). either way, im not happy about it. if it were towards the end of the trip, i could just stop using the laptop till i got back, but as it is, i need to keep offloading pics from my camera, etc. i burned a cd with all the pics ive taken so far but theres lots more on my HD i want to keep... ar.
yesterday we took a day trip to himeiji castle, though i dont think it was worth the $33 round trip train ticket and the hour and a half train ride each way. it was pretty cool, but it was all empty and we climbed up to the top (6th floor) only to look around and then come back down. shrug. i guess the same thing is happening here that happened in italy - you see shrine after shrine after shrine and they start to get monotonous and unimpressive. i did get some interesting pictures tho, like the ones of brittany backlit by the light coming in from the window, or the one of alia and andy looking out the window.
when we got back we went out to an arcade and played a bit. we were originally going to rent a movie and watch it at ko's place but we got back too late for that. at the arcade there was a set of weird games in the back that were apparently some form of strip mahjong (in electronic form, mind you). there was a creepy businessman playing one of the games. it made me wonder what kind of situation would cause someone to want to come to an arcade to play a video game that occasionally offered tantalizing glimpses of nudity... i mean even if what he wanted was porn, there's surely much easier (and more private) ways to come by it. so shrug. i didn't get it.
this morning jenn, dia, and i went to a foreign film movie theater near jenn's house to watch bowling for columbine. none of us had seen it. it was very good, though i thought he over-sensationalized things a bit, which hurt his message i thought, especially since that's precisely what he was decrying. also, he clearly used his control over the editing process to show his moral adversaries in a negative light. still, a good movie.
ive been using my walkman every day as i walk to school and its annoying having to reach back to my bookbag and unzip it to pause or raise or lower volume etc, and i noticed everyone here has sony minidisc players with that little remote control in the headphone wiring, that they clip to their shirt or their bookbag strap or whatever. and since my discman is a sony and has the jack for the remote, i went down to the sony store on kawaramachi to see if i could buy just the remote, and sure enough they had it, though for $40. ack. still, i got it, and i think it was worth it. it's really nice, displays the song info etc, and it was so convenient using it on the way to school. they also had the perfect set of headphones, they are exactly what i was looking for - the vertical in-the-ear type, fold-up yet over the head style (i.e. not those weird ones that slip around your ears), and waterproof. they were $27 but they were exactly what ive been looking for so i got them as well. plus they are also sony so they are designed to work with the remote (i.e. halfway down the headphone wire, you can disconnect most of the wire and have a small jack to plug into the remote. hard to describe but very convenient). so anyway, that was my purchases for the day. im out of money so i really need to go exchange some more, but nowhere is open today.
oh yeah, at a store we were at yesterday, i found not one but TWO mk2 supra models (one a small 1/48 scale die-cast one (pic), and one a 1/24 scale plastic model you build (pic)). picked them both up. they also had a bit-charg initial d set (bit-charg being the tiny r/c cars about the size of a hot wheels car that you can customize with faster engines, suspension, gearing, etc) (pic). couldn't help it :) it comes with a hachi-roku body (takumi's car) along with the yellow FD (takahashi keisuke). anyway, gotta finish uploading pictures, and do my dell support request thing.
Originally posted on LiveJournal. Original post