JR East provides a PDF of the JR trains around tokyo.

I head off to Vietnam for 5 days tomorrow. Surprisingly, Slate seems to know this and just published an article about Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). It describes the effects the war has left on the country: lots of bombs, disgruntled men vietnamese veterans who fought for the south, opportunities to shoot AK-47s, children effected by Agent Orange.

I think Vietnam will be very different for me. I find Saigon too daunting and will get out of there as fast as possible. I also have little interest in the dreary details of the war. I want to know about Vietnam’s more distant past, and more hopeful future.

After landing late and spending the first night in a hotel in Saigon, I will catch a midday plane to Dalat and from there spend a day getting a tour of the waterfalls and lakes from one of the highly recommended “Easy Riders”. Finish off the day touring the market, eating dinner and maybe even playing a round of golf. The next day I’m going to spend the day biking down the mountains and towards the beaches at Mui Ne. We will then spend the next couple days lounging on the beach, visiting a 13th century Tower and finally returning to Saigon and finally tour that city before catching my 11pm flight back to Japan.

With any luck things will all turn out and I will have a wonderful vacation. I’ll post pictures and the details of my journey when I return.

Dvorak mentions the idea of making a WYSIWYG editor for CSS. He is most interested in forcing compliance from browsers, but it seems like a very powerful idea. Perhaps it is just too complicated?

• Salaryman Style
• Ken’s Friend’s Band: Moulder’s Lounge
• The Town where Will lives in Japan: Honai Ehime
• The Baseball Almanac – every baseball statistic you ever hoped to find, plus a lot of history
• iCapture get a rendering of your website in another browser.
• Spirit Imagery – the martian rover on mars.
• The Mars Exploration Rover Mission homepage.
• Peter’s friend Nick – the Sweedish Australian came to visit.
• Liberated Games – games like Star Control that have been made free and open source

I just checked out the Apple store and built my ideal computer:

• Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz
  • ATI Radeon 9600 w/128MB DDR SDRAM 065-5538
  • Apple Keyboard & Apple Mouse – U.S. English 065-5531
  • Bluetooth Module + AirPort Extreme Card 065-5725
  • Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 065-5745
  • 250GB Serial ATA – 7200rpm 065-5536
  • 16x SuperDrive double-layer (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) 065-5537
  • 2GB DDR400 SDRAM (PC3200) – 4×512 065-5702
  • Mac OS X – U.S. English 065-5530
  • Accessory kit 065-5529
• Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)

Man…dual 2GHz with a 250GB HD, 2GB RAM and a 23″ cinema display. That would be beyond amazing.

If you are a rapist, buying a gun might get you in trouble for your whole 30 year history of rapes.

About a year ago MovableType changed their license to be closed and expensive. I have yet to bother upgrading, but MTs difficulties editing my posts containing Japanese has led me to want to upgrade. I think I will go with WordPress. It seems to have the largest user community and also includes utilities to import all my MT posts. b2Evoultion seems like a good alternative as well. Here is a website comparing the various packages.

One of the hassles of being a foreign resident in Japan is when you want to leave the country on a trip. If you have a work visa, you must purchase a reentry visa before your departure. The cost is 6000 yen for a multiple-use reentry visa (3000 for the single-use one). It actually is pretty painless. For people in Kanazawa, you can go to the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya Immigration Bureau.

If you are in the Tokyo area, there are a bunch of branches depending on where you live in Tokyo. For me, living in Haijima (which is near Akishima and Hachioji), the closest branch is the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau. The branch is about 1.5 km from both the Tachikawa and Kunitachi stations.

Getting to the Tachikawa Branch of the Tokyo Immigration Bureau

• Take the JR Chuo line to Tachikawa station.
• Proceed out the north exit.
• Get on bus number 12.
• Get off at the Takama Vehicle Inspection stop (Takama shaken jimusho mae 多摩車検事務所前).
• Follow the signs to the immigration bureau. It should be a 1 minute walk north of the stop (and a little bit east).

Address: KUNITACHI-SHI KITA 3-31-2　国立市北三丁目３１−２.
Phone: 04-2528-7179

Are you born slippy?

Nick just caught me on aim. He’s in China and is soon going on to Russia through Mongolia. Sounds cool. Here is his blog about his trip (He’s almost two months behind).