I went around northern Japan for a month, in my little K-car. The 2011 Tsunami struck the North east coast of Japan hardest, reaching 42m run-up height in places. I wanted to see the damage for myself, and also get a feel for how the rebuild is progressing after 4 years.
The height the Tsunami reached on this apartment building. Most damaged buildings had been cleared, but this one was left as a monument. Standing beside this building you struggle to imagine how much water was flowing through it.
My little car which I "borrowed" from an expat acquaintance. It's a K-car meaning it is tiny and has a 600cc engine, but its 4wd and light, and I don't care if it gets damaged because it cost me $300, so I can take it anywhere.
This train station near Matsushima has been abandoned since the Tsunami cut the train line. The rebuild of the new raised concrete track is slowly reconnecting stations, this one will be next.
Sea wall destroyed by the force of water.
The coast line around Miyagi and Iwate areas has many fjords that focused the Tsunami waves, making them bigger.
Modern Japanese construction is earthquake safe, but otherwise fairly flimsy from a structural point of view. The old style of construction found in this shrine however, was much stronger. Left standing with damaged roof tiles while the houses around it were washed away (I think that the gravestones were re-placed since the disaster)
I have more photos but many of them didn't capture the scale of the destruction. Or the massive size of the new sea walls and towering concrete overpass bridges that are being constructed across valleys. (Japan government response to the disaster has been to pump cash into major public works in the region - a coast expressway for one)
So here are some random photos:
Fox god? He bankin'
A normal car in Japan.
This angry squid asks you to stop littering in the sea.
Stealth Camping
In Japan it is generally legal to camp in public parks, roadsides or forest parks (though campgrounds are encouraged). Even though my Japanese is OK, rather than searching for guesthouses, booking, then checking in checking out and all that, it is much easier to go without an itinerary and see where the road takes me for the day. Japan has a very safe feeling, even more than New Zealand, I don't feel I am going to run into any angry people here, so summer camping is fine. And there are many Onsen (public baths) for luxurious cheap bathing. But still, I would rather not draw any attention. The hardest part is finding a place where my car will not be noticed, either blending in or hidden from the main roadways, then either reclining the drivers seat in my car, or...
Hennessy Hammock. It's a tent. That hangs from the trees. Great for forest camping as you don't need clear ground and can camp on a mountainside, where it is very unlikely anyone is going to notice. I stayed for 3 nights in the mountain at the center of a busy tourist town, Hakodate, left my pack and hammock tent in the mountain while I was out and about having basically the same overall experience as a tourist that pays $150 per night for a hotel.
The Advantage of camping on a hilltop is you are right there to greet the sunrise.
Hotel plebs are still driving to get to prime photo-taking locations while I am enjoying the morning light and still air at Matsushima Bay because I slept on the mountain.
Superzoom
The Nikon P610. 60x optical zoom. I bought this before my north Japan tour, took all the above photos with it. have never had a decent camera before. I say decent, it is actually a glorified point and shoot with a huge lens and fairly cheap at around $500, but its fine for my needs.
The port of Akita city. I meant to red square this, but there is a brown sawdust mountain at the factory at the top right, right?
Zoom in with the camera and this is what is there.
In a week or so I'm planning to visit the Nuclear exclusion zone in Fukishima, and sneak in if it is at all possible. (I'll only be there for a short time, not enough to get radiation sickness or risk cancer. Relax I have a physics degree!) So I'll see how that goes and maybe post a few more pictures.
Here for 1 year on working holiday visa. I'm traveling around for now, to cities that interest me, so I can decide where to settle down and find a job. Yeah, probably English teaching, seeing as it's hard to find anything with computers or engineering with only conversational level Japanese skill.
Finding some underground poker games would be fun though.
I feel I should preface this with: "Nerding before birding"
So, after quitting poker (again) I'm looking to learn new skills in computer programming and language, and to support that I'm doing alot of study about memory, and memory techniques.
Flashcard software is allowing me to learn subjects really quickly, and retain the knowledge, and I want to talk about it.
Check it out:
The forgetting curve
We learn a new fact like "in mountaineering, the death zone refers to altitudes above 8000m" or "Japanese for vending machine is 'jidou han baishi'" Recall of a fact drops off sharply without repetition. So we make a flashcard for it, and repeat the exposure, then after the second viewing, recall drops off more slowly. and so on.
This pattern in human forgetting leads to the idea repeating the flashcard at just the right time. Too soon, and you have wasted a few valuable seconds on something you already recall, too late, and the memory pathway has eroded and it won't stick.
You might have heard that the best way to study your notes from a class is 2 hours after class, then 2 days after, then a week after that etc. This is how to get the material lodged in long term memory. doing a ton of repetitions at first learning won't make it stick in long term memory any better. Our minds need the space of time in between.
So this software called supermemo, basically keeps track of that time-spacing for each flashcard, and every evening I spend ~20minutes running through the repetitions it throws up. The flashcard question appears, I try to recall the answer as best I can, then I push 'show answer' and rate how easy it was to recall, from a rating of: bright, good, pass, fail, bad or null. This tells the program when to ask me about that flashcard again. It's actually quite entertaining to run through the days repetitions, because everything it throws up is just on the edge of recall, so its challenging. And if you are learning multiple subjects, you get alot of variation in questions. By letting the program manage what I cram, I gain alot of time to read new topics, adding key points to my supermemo library as new flashcards.
So basically this is super useful for learning anything, I'm currently using it to learn Japanese, SQL programming, Perl Programming, the mnemonic major system (might make another post about this) and some nice arguments I want to be able to remember from 'Fooled by Randomness'
Anyway, this is running a bit long, so let me end with a delicious quote from this article:
"The problem of forgetting might not torment us so much if we could only convince ourselves that remembering isn't important. Perhaps the things we learn — words, dates, formulas, historical and biographical details — don't really matter. Facts can be looked up. That's what the Internet is for. When it comes to learning, what really matters is how things fit together. We master the stories, the schemas, the frameworks, the paradigms.
The disadvantage of this comforting notion is that it's false. "The people who criticize memorization — how happy would they be to spell out every letter of every word they read?" asks Robert Bjork, chair of UCLA's psychology department and one of the most eminent memory researchers. After all, Bjork notes, children learn to read whole words through intense practice, and every time we enter a new field we become children again. "You can't escape memorization," he says. "There is an initial process of learning the names of things. That's a stage we all go through. It's all the more important to go through it rapidly." "
So, I've been watching a few LeggoPoker videos on Stroggs account (cause I am a too cheap to pay for it myself) And the Chess videos are amazing.
The coach, Curtains, is an international grandmaster who travels to alot of big live tournies in his quest to "not suck at the game" (even though he is already in top 100 in the world or something, heh).
He is very focused on making the correct play, and thinking things through, and making the best play. Also he is hyperactive, reminds me a little of day[9]. He was the guy who played Durrr for $50k in a chess game
He, somehow, makes exciting chess videos.
And its been helping me with poker, really getting me to re-evaluate my position in the a hand, and to figure out if I can do something like run a three barrel, or raise a river.
It's better than a poker training video. Rather than just doing what a video tells me, I am taking his approach/mindset and applying it to a HU match, and finding alot of creative lines to take.
Just talking in terms of kicking ass has made me more excited to play good poker.
Yep, thats it, having a bunch of new words to apply to compeditive situation has made me more focused at poker.
Phew, ok, I got that pinned down, blog is a sucess. thanks LP
P.S. My Graph for Feb. NL50 to NL400, HU 6max and FR. + Show Spoiler +
Now you know where all the EV goes, that is right, straight into my account
So Its the end of the prop bet today, deciding who has to embassas themself with public speaking to attractive females. And I am up only $500 in EV, Stroggos is up $2000 in EV
My face today:
we both ran pretty bad but stroggos crushed a few leggo coaches HU and made a nice comeback
so all my imaginary money winnings came from PS this time + Show Spoiler +
So, now I until tormorrow when I hit the mall, I will be figuring out some good stories to tell to fill in 2 minutues with a random stranger. I am thinking of having a range of topics like: { Hipster music, running/health, things to do in Dunedin City } something like that. Just opening with "Hi" and asking if they have 2 mintues, explain the situation a bit, then when the convo drops, plug a story in the gap. And just aim for a lighthearted energentic tone overall.
Main problem areas are going to be "umm"s and "ahh"s, avoiding saying something retarded, and keeping confident body positioning.
My flatmate Stroggos and I have extra motivation for the next 2 weeks. Grinding it out, who ever makes the least in $EV will have to do a stunt.
Things like Extreme Ironing in the freeway road island, or loser has to sing Rebecca Black in the city center for cash.
But for the first one we decided on something simple and good for personal devlopment: Loser has to talk to 5 hot girls in the mall, each for more than 2 minutes, without them walking away/ slapping/ calling the cops.
They will probably look something like this:
Going to be pretty hard to keep a convo with a stranger going that long with my current skills. Winner pays the loser a completion bonus of $200 which will help to even out variance a little, and make sure the stunt gets done.
Keeping he focus on EV is already making me play better and rethink some spews.
Going to play some monster sessions of focused poker so strogg has to deal with akward conversations!
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