Hakone Kowakien Yunessun is a hot springs spa resort and water amusement park located in the spectacular scenic surroundings of Hakone, Japan. We have a unique blend of traditional Japanese onsen (hot springs) and water recreation services and activities. Hakone is considered the most popular Onsen (Hot Springs) resort areas in Japan, and Yunessun takes full advantage of the abundance of high quality hot springs in Hakone.

The main attraction (and the only with a queue) were the doctor fish, a Turkish bath full of Turkish fish that converge on your feet and eat the dead skin off it. Also: green tea onsen, coffee onsen, red wine onsen, sake onsen, curry onsen, Dead Sea onsen.

• Campaign girls, cos-players, and guys taking their pictures
• 24 player online Bomberman on mobile phones
• Paperman, a cool ego shooter
• no Nintendo booth at all (but Sega showing off their Wii games)
• long queues everywhere
• kids with guns

Wine has gotten good enough to run Internet Explorer. It seems to work rather well, I could even access Google Mail, Maps and Video in all their JavaScript/Flash glory. There is a nice installer script that downloads the offical Windows binaries from Microsoft and Macromedia (Flash player) and sets up paths and a wrapper script to start it.

Using Cissy's shopping bike (the police took mine). No gear shift, no back-pedal brakes, no helmet (but an iPod). No way to measure speed or distance. Probably around 20km. Took two hours and twenty minutes anyway. Lost at least half an hour in Mita by taking a very wrong turn.

I think of this as a one-time thing, same as climbing Mount Fuji (a wise man has to do it once, but only a fool would do it more than once), but it was actually quite pleasant (well, my legs will offer their opinion on this tomorrow), and I have to do it at least once more to get home tonight -- in darkness.

Update: The ride home also took two hours and twenty minutes, including about ten doing circles in Kameido (almost home) trying to find my bridge across the the river.

The government has embraced a policy of peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. There is a Department of Mutant Affairs, headed by the Beast, a charismatic blue fur-ball, Professor X's school is being tolerated, and Magneto is an outcast who lives in hiding. But the uneasy truce is shattered when a new drug is discovered that can permanently disable the X gene, eliminating the mutants' powers. While some hail this as a cure, others are up in arms against it, especially with the potential of treatment becoming compulsory.

Some movies are probably better told as TV shows, where there is just more time for long, episodic story arches. But in case you still remember what the previous two instalments were about, you will not be disappointed. Part Three brings the X-Men series to a satisfactory conclusion, the fears that the abrupt departure of director Bryan Singer (who defected to helm Superman) would destroy the project turned out to be unfounded. One has to be afraid, however, that as long as the franchise remains a money machine, there will be future (less impressive) sequels, and the final scene (after the credits) clearly suggests that possibility.

7 points

It is another of these (rare) days when Yoshinoya offers gyudon again (see also last year's file). One day only, as long as supply (one million bowls) lasts. The picture shows the store right in front of our house. I guess in more central areas the lines must rival Disneyland's. I hate lines. But I am hungry now ...

Nintendo is being unorthodox in their battle against Sony and Microsoft: The Wii will be launched in Japan on December 2nd, two weeks after the US release date. At least it will be cheaper here (speaking of pricing, rumour has it that Nintendo is not losing money on their hardware, whereas X-Box and PlayStation are highly subsidised by their makers).

My parents-in-law, who are supposed to stay here for twenty-seven days only have visa for fifteen. I have to think that this is part of the general terrible immigration situation that Chinese people have to put up with. Usually, tourist visa are good for ninety days (and passport holders of the so-called First World do not even have to apply for them; German citizens for example can stay for up to six months in Japan without any paperwork).

We have to find out if the visa can be extended (unlikely) or otherwise change their flight and our travel plans (the Hakone package, though, is booked for next weekend anyway and can proceed as is).

Cissy's parents are coming from Shanghai today. They will stay with us for about a month. I hope we can entertain them properly, so that they will not be bored. Ater all, we are almost not at home during the week (and do not have a TV). Cissy, who is the tidiest person I know, is also worried that our house is not spotless enough to debunk her mother's impression of her being messy. With me living here, too, that will be a challenging undertaking.

I would be lying if I said that for the first time in ages I left work when the sun was still up, but this factual error would only have been caused by geographical circumstances resulting in darkness even at 6:30. The reason for leaving so early was a presentation at the Pink Cow today, a bar / event space in Shibuya that is always filled with people whose work days regularily seem to end around this time. It is therefore probably healthy for me to go there more often.

Today's talk was a multimedia presentation by (according to his name card) Discordian Evangelist Tim Pritlove of Germany's Chaos Computer Club, who is a driving force behind Project Blinkenlights, during which the CCC turned an empty building into a giant low-res computer screen. Tim spoke about the history and activities of CCC and hackers in general, and gave a nice look behind the scenes of the original Blinkenlights in Berlin (which interestingly enough launched on September 11, 2001) and a follow-up project at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris.

Obviously, there was talk (wishful thinking?) among the audience about bringing the Blinkenteam to Tokyo, but no one present was well-connected enough to have a large enough building (and a large enough budget) at their disposal.

Some apartment buildings offer layouts configured for the utmost in comfort, with an extensive array of facilities for common use. Others provide the ultimate in functionality and guaranteed performance, for maximum peace of mind. But how many can give you such a feeling of unlimited space, paired with a distinct and pervasive style?

It seems big financial institutes all have hiking clubs. Today we joined UBS on their trip to Kawaji Onsen need Nikko, where a 7 km hike through the woods took us to an outdoor spa.

Getting there was a three hour train ride, and having missed our scheduled return train by a minute (we could see it taking off from its elevated platform and disappearing in the mountains) we had to wait 80 minutes for the next one. The good part of having taken a train from so far out turned out to be that since they had to electronic ticket gates in Kawaji-Yumoto station, the fare adjustment machine back in Tokyo could not handle the ticket, and the station master could not find the correct fare in his handbook either, and had to let us go free. Entirely unexpected in this generally extremely well-organised country.

An exhibition at the Museum of Photography in Ebisu celebrating the 50th anniversary of the World Press Photo awards and showcasing the winners. Photojournalism in context since 1955. As it is, things are pretty grim. Most of the pictures show dead people or dying people. Not an especially uplifting collection, but definitely worth seeing.