I don’t use a smartphone enough to worry about it. If I am using my phone, most of the time it’s either Anki, Google Maps, or, like you mention, banking/government stuff.

Texting via SMS (or whatever it is these days) isn’t really a thing in Japan, either, which makes things more difficult especially as I despise talking on the phone. If, for example, I’m at the supermarket and wife remembers something she needs, getting that message is good

I’d love to at some point but, last I heard, it breaks the felica and wallet integration which I need to do japanese government stuff (and use the train and such)

English is notoriously awful regarding orthography vs pronunciation. I actually thought you meant something that rhymed with Bach just looking at the name with a longer ‘a’ for some reason (which is weird since vowel length isn’t phonemic in English).

Edit: you probably also could have said “hard a” or something since it probably literally thinks ‘long a’ means ‘hold the a sound for a longer duration’ (which makes sense to me)

Raych?

I was redhat/mandrake of which neither worked well on my PC, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and mint (playing with distros like LoaF at various points).

I got started on Linux at home from the valley of despair on early-2000s Gentoo. It wasn’t that bad, but I did have a lot more time on my hands being too poor to go out most of the time.

I just put mint on a laptop yesterday; got no time for it anymore

well, I’m snipped so that’s not a problem, but if we decided to for some reason adopt, they probably wouldn’t love it. I wonder if tabbed browsing would ever go away and it would be a surname based on something that everyone forgets (there are more obscure examples but for example Cooper, Cobbler, Fletcher, Bowyer, Tyler, Taylor, Brewster, etc.)

I now have a random wire antenna ~16m long (though not straight and the very ends wind around the structure I’m using to hold it up which I’m sure is not ideal), a ~4m counterpoise-ish-thing, a 9:1 balun, and cable to the SDR.

I’ve gotten wefax (though in negative and spotty, so still some figuring out to do). Still no IBP beacons at all, though.

I have fldigi working to a degree using soundcard as input. No hits using a regex of the beacons’ callsigns (including the one here in Japan) on any frequency I’ve tried. Not sure why that is yet.

My brain added an ‘n’ to the first word of “waking universe” and I think it still works

Yup! It’s dumb. Bonus one: one could get sued by posting on social media a pic/vid that shows someone cheating and they get caught. It’s profoundly stupid

I grew up in rural Ohio and spent time in rural TX as well for a brief period. As a kid, I walked about 20+ minutes to bail hay in my neighbor’s fields in the summer for cash. I am currently farming in rural Tohoku Japan.

Certain things are similar and certain things are different. To call where I live a suburb is just wrong yet we, and those even more rural than us, have fibre. I looked at buying land on the side of a mountain before buying this place and, although I’d have to pay for the run from the nearest point, I could still get fiber. Being Japan, I of course had to apply by fax machine, but the infrastructure is there for most of the country, both urban and rural.

Edit to add: we have multiple fiber companies as well, at least one of which being a fully private company.

Japan really likes it’s foam (7:3 beer to foam is considered best). They even have cans where most of the top pops off and it foams up to a head (I hate those). I was always the guy who would order it without foam at my local. One of the half-Japanese staff was the same. I don’t care for the texture (and younger, poorer me didn’t care for what I saw as a waste of money). The only good thing I’ve heard is it can keep the beer fresher in the glass for longer, but I was never a slow drinker.

In Japan, a person can get sued for leaving an honest, negative review. One has to be careful with wording to avoid that completely (i.e. making sure that it’s clearly stated that the content is a personal opinion (as opposed to an accusation, I guess?)). Some people still do write them and some get scary take-down notices (which may or may not be real or enforceable). As far as I know, someone could leave a low rating on like a star-based system or whatever and be fine, but I am not a lawyer.

a kitchen is hell… mostly because of him.

As someone who used to work in kitchens before his show was a thing, there’s always been abusive assholes there.

Posting from my fiber-to-the-home connection in rural bumfuck Japan presently for no particular reason.

So far no luck, but I only seem to get flights when they are going to/from the nearest airport to places south of me; everyone else is going around. I’m not sure how far the range is meant to be　（EDIT: 370km or so per wiki). I can very faintly see something on the frequency, but Dump1090 isn’t catching anything.

I have some parts coming today to try a ~20m random wire antenna. I got 2x20m copper wire in case I need to do a counterpoise on the other side (which seems to be like 1/4 length (so 5m) of wire?).

Edit: also apparently it’s not required in Japan, so I’m guessing that’s why nothing domestic at least has it. Maybe if I leave dump1090 running long enough, it might catch some international flight, but none seem to go that near me.

Thanks very much. I had a feeling antenna size was at least part of the problem there. I appreciate the help and tools. Thanks!

(Mostly) very good public transit in big cities and even in some smaller areas.

I personally still love to see the mountains. I grew up in a place scraped flat by glaciers in the US and seeing the mountains on a couple of sides of me every day here in Japan still feels really neat and inspiring, even a decade in.

I think there are some other areas that have a lot more to worry about than Tokyo. I don’t remember for sure, but I think the expected path this time would be north in Yamanashi (I looked into what predictions were when I was house-hunting a few years ago).

“Are there actually any signs of eruption?” said Shinichiro Kariya, a 57-year-old hospital employee. “Why are we now hearing things like ‘10 centimeters of ash could fall,’ even in Tokyo? I’m wondering why this is happening all of a sudden.”

I’m shocked that this is news to anyone. Most schools send kids to a disaster prep field trip at least once where they would cover all this stuff. I guess maybe some part of Japan doesn’t talk about it, but there have definitely been TV shows about it, even in the decade I’ve been living here.

I think VK is still around which I also think is Russian.