I was in the Aeon department store, in the Men's section, and discovered Demon Sword character ties. About $30 each. Not sure anyone in Japan would dare wear one in the office, or with a school uniform, so I don't know if there's a real market for them, but they look ok.
The fronts of the ties are pretty safe and mundane-looking. The character images are on the short ends, which would normally be hidden behind the rest of the tie. So, maybe you could get away with wearing these in Japan if no one looks very closely at them.
I've been experimenting with the GoPro Hero 8 over the last couple of weeks, to see what I can get out of it. Two of the experiments were with time lapse videos of the Sakurajima volcano. On the first one, I used the default of 0.5 second intervals, but the playback was too slow to be interesting. The second was at 2 second intervals, and the wind was too strong, blowing the camera around on the tripod and destroying the shot. Additionally, the wind flattened out the ash plumes, so none of the ash went up very far.
The third trial was for GoPro's "time warp" function, which you can see in many online videos with sped up footage of events that normally take a long time to experience. While you can manually set the interval times, the camera's auto setting will calculate how fast you're moving and automatically set the interval that best matches what you're doing. I decided that I'd use auto first just to get a baseline video, and that the route would be walking up Shiroyama hill, and then down the other end at the Reimeikan natural history museum.
The weather was perfect on Feb. 3rd, so that's when I set out. The entire walk took maybe 45 minutes (I wasn't timing myself), and I stopped in a few places to add narration. The GoPro has a screen button to switch between time warp and real-time, so I'd time warp while walking, and change to real-time when I wanted to talk. Total playback time is 13 minutes, with close to half of that being me talking about the history of the area. When I got back home, I discovered that the camera disables the microphone in time warp mode. I can understand that with interval recording, but I was hoping that changing to real-time would also activate the mic. I also discovered that the camera splits videos into shorter segments with weird-ass numbering (i.e. - GH010183, GH020183, GH030183, GH010184, GH010185, where 10183, 20183 and 30183 are all parts of the same recording session). So, the time warp video has this jump cut right in the middle of when I was talking at Reimeikan. Sigh.
The main differences between time warp and time lapse seem to be that time warp uses digital camera stabilization, and that battery life is extended a little more in time lapse. Normally, the batteries zero out after close to 60 minutes in normal recording mode and time warp, but time lapse looked to take closer to 80 or 90 minutes. That, and time warp has the real-time speed button on the screen. If you're using time warp and want to record sound, you have to stop recording, switch to normal record mode and start recording again. This is bad if you want to have seamless transitions between moving really fast, and then moving normally. It may be possible to use the tablet to remotely control the GoPro, so I don't have to juggle the camera while pressing physical buttons, but that means having to carry the camera in one hand and the tablet in the other (since I don't have a second person to walk with and assist me), and that's not going to be comfortable after a couple of hours of walking.
Anyway, after discovering I didn't have the narration recorded, I had to go back out the following day to walk the route a second time, with the GoPro in normal record mode. And, I had to roughly time the narrations in my head at each point. Sometimes I talked a little too long, and others a little too short, so I had to do a lot of cutting and stretching to get the timings to more or less work out. But, I also made sure to get background sounds (bird calls, me walking and breathing hard up the steps) that I could splice in for the fastwalk sequences. I had initially planned to use some of the royalty-free music the Lightworks editor offers. I decided on Lightworks based on some reviews of what the free version supports. I can't afford the $24 or so per-month fee for a monthly subscription, and the music turns out to be $29.99 per song. Yeah, that's not worth it, given the extremely low view counts of my other videos. So, I just used the background sounds instead.
Editing the full video suddenly revealed some limitations of the free version of Lightworks. I'd stripped the audio tracks off of the video files by using Audacity's "import/export" functions. I had three video files I did use - a normal mode introduction to the video (30-45 seconds) and the two halves of the split fastwalk. Then there were 6 real-time audio tracks for a total of about 45 minutes. I had to cut and splice audio under the fastwalk video segments (anywhere between 3-10 seconds per segment (i.e. - up a flight of stairs, along a flat area, up a different set of stairs, places with different bird songs), plus the narrations, which ran between 30 seconds and 5 minutes each). I'd gotten up to about 10-12 audio segments and 7 minutes of video when Lightworks started crapping the bed. Switching between editing audio and project would cause zoom to jump to max zoom out. The playback position marker would erase the sound tracks on the screen (the sound itself was ok, but I couldn't tell what audio segment I was on), and at one point, I wasn't able to select audio segments to move them or do fade-ins/fade-outs. Eventually, I had to give up and export the half-finished project to an mp4, create a new project and then import that mp4 back in plus my remaining sound files, to edit the second half of the soundtrack. Even then, I started getting the unwanted zoom-jump problem when I had around another 10 audio segments laid down.
Fortunately, the videos I'm planning for The Black Chamber recreational cryptography youtube channel don't use time warp, or very many audio or video segments (beyond normal editing to remove mistakes or long dead-air gaps). I'm hoping those will go more easily. Overall, I spent a full evening editing in the background sounds and narration (5-6 hours). The final result isn't perfect, but it's good enough for the experiment. If you like the video, please press the "Like" button on youtube. If I get over 100 "likes", I'll consider making a second fastwalk video. There's a lot of history in this area, and some interesting sightseeing, and I can easily come up with 10 ideas for fastwalk "themes" (including the final battle between Saigo Takamori and the government he helped create, a walk around the volcano island, and the caves the military dug for bomb shelters during WW II).
I was wondering what happened to juggler/performer K@ito after Dolphin Port was torn down. The Port shopping complex had been a popular spot for street jugglers and clowns to set up stage and try to entertain tourists. Even before the Port was scheduled to be torn down, Covid-19 messed stuff up by forcing a ban on cruise ship tourism. On Sunday, I was down at the nearby Waterfront Park, trying to test out the new GoPro with time lapse video of the volcano (I'll have to try that again another day), and I spotted K@ito attempting to practice in the area. I say "attempting" because he kept attracting people that wanted to talk to him.
The main distractions were two female friends. However, he did manage to get them to take pictures of him in mid-juggle (see above).
But, what they were using for the camera is K@ito's drone. It got a lot of use because K@ito wanted to show it off to his friends, and they wanted to play around with it. I was a bit surprised that he had the drone, because the Japanese government has been trying to restrict ownership and usage of drones ever since one was found stranded on top of a government building (I think it was the Diet building) some years ago.
It's very compact, but handles very stably. I'd like to get one for myself, but I don't actually have much real use for it, and not many places I'd be able to fly it.
Drinking places that provide finger food in Japan are called "izakaya." There was a block of about 20 little izakaya up near the main train station. I went in there a couple times, for drinks and fried chicken skewers. They were cozy little shops, able to hold no more than 5-6 people each. Decent food, lots of alcohol, but a bit pricey. And then, all of a sudden, I find that it's being torn out.
I don't know if it's because the "village" was losing money following the Covid-19 shutdown and subsequent social distancing, if there's a plan to replace everything with more modern shops, or if it's just going to turn into another parking lot, then apartment complex.
Yet another bit of history that's been lost in Kagoshima. Sigh.
I was down at Waterfront Park (where the Dolphin Port shopping complex used to be) and found the Ginga Maru. According to the Ship Spotting website, it's a "training ship" operated by the Japan Agency of Maritime Education & Training for Seafarers.
I was initially attracted by the lifeboat pods. I don't know anything about these, but I assume they're for surviving on very heavy seas.
This entire back compartment is just for holding the anchor rope spools. That surprised me.
I've started up a new youtube channel for recreational cryptography, called The Black Chamber. In order to get the video I want, and to handle a wireless mic, I ended up having to buy a GoPro Hero 8 a little while back.
It's a cute little device, very compact, but pricey. I've been getting a lot of use out of it, though, which is good. The touchscreen doesn't like my fingers for some reason, so I mostly control it through an app on my Android tablet.
I wanted to get a shot to post to The Cog is Dead steampunk band page to show off the t-shirt I got for Christmas. So, while I was out with the GoPro on Saturday, when the weather was almost perfect, I decided to test it out with a still photo. I think it did a good job on the colors and resolution.
While I was at Waterfront Park down at the Bay this Sunday, I found a photo shoot. Central Park had been a popular place for fashion shoots, but I haven't seen anything there for over a year. Waterfront is still popular, though. No idea if this is for a wedding shot, or high school prom. The dress looks about prom quality, but I don't think Japanese high schools have "proms."
I'm the guy that created the Akira Toriyama Super Database, as well as the .Hack-oriented Helba Gata. Back in the 1990's, I lived in Japan for 2 years, working as a video game programmer and as a technical writer for Hitachi. After returning to the States and living in Texas for 10 years, I've decided to try living in Japan again. I'm interested in various manga, and to a lesser extent various anime. I'm also studying nihon-go.
