Yesterday I attended MyCOM Infinite PRO-68K, a small event about retro computers at the conference floor of the Akihabara UDX building.

I arrived a little bit after 1pm, in the middle of a talk by Mr. Mikito Ichikawa, president of Mindware.

Mr. Ichikawa during his talk (Click to enlarge)

The lights were dimmed during the talk, so I waited until it ended before visiting the stands.

Today I took Yuki to the vet for her vaccination. I always take her to the Nomura Veterinary Clinic in Nakano because this doctor is especialized in exotic pets. Not just ferrets, but all kind of animals that other doctors wouldn’t even dare to touch. Almost everybody in Tokyo who owns a ferret brings his to this clinic.

As an example, one day I saw a man come to Dr. Nomura with his 5-6 marmosets on his back . Click to enlarge.

Dr. Nomura’s clinic is a bit far from home, so I can’t just take Yuki and bring her there. I have to put her in her carrier cage and either take the train (inconvenient) or a taxi. We took a taxi today.

Yuki relaxing in her carrier on the taxi to the vet.

Every time you take your pet to Dr. Nomura he does a checkup to check that your little furry (or scaly, if you’re bringing a snake) is healthy. Usually there are no problems and your pet gets a vaccine or some other medication, and then you pay and go home.

Today it was a bit different…

If you’re following me on Facebook or Twitter then you already learnt about this earlier today:

This morning we went to Ginza for some important shopping, and afterwards we headed for the Sony Building. The reason: an exhibition opened there last week about the design of Sony products, and they have on display one of the coolest-looking MSX computers ever produced: a red HIT-BIT HB-101.

Sony Design: MAKING MODERN
Place: Sony Building (8th floor), Ginza
Admission fee: Free
Companion book: Sony Design: Making Modern
Held from April 29th to June 14th, 2015

Sony HIT-BIT HB-101 (Red). Click to enlarge.

On February 4th 2014 there was a debate between Bill Nye (American scientist known for his The Science Guy educational program) and Ken Ham (the creationist behind the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis). The topic was:

Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern, scientific era?

The whole debate is available online here (warning: it’s over two hours long), but this is not what I want to write about this time. During the debate, Matt Stopera from BuzzFeed asked 22 creationists to write a message or question to the other side. Most questions were quite dumb. This one is my favourite:

I thought it would be fun (for me) to reply these questions, so here are my answers (keep reading).

The Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り, steel phallus festival) is a shinto event organized by the Kanayama shrine (金山神社, Kanayama Jinja) in the Kawasaki province. It takes place the first Sunday of April every year.

This festival has its origins in the Edo period (1603 – 1868), when the town’s prostitutes visited the shrine to pray for protection against syphilis. Currently the festival is dedicated to fertility and it collects funds for HIV research.

The events start at eleven in the morning. There are performances of traditional Japanese music and dance, and also a very fun penis-shaped daikon (Japanese radish) carving contest. Around the shrine grounds there are stalls selling candy and key rings also shaped like penises or vaginas. This year there were also one or two stalls selling adult sex toys.

Around one in the afternoon the visitors go on a procession around the town carrying two mikoshi (神輿, portable shinto shrines) and a wooden cart carrying a huge ping penis.

After the procession many of the visitors head to the Kawasaki Daishi (川崎大師), a very beautiful buddhist shrine around ten minutes walking from there. The avenue to the entrance of the temple grounds has many shops selling souvenirs and food, that reminds me very much of the Nakamise street before the Senso-ji temple in Asakusa.

Enjoy the photos. Feel free to let me know if you’re interested in going next year, because I’ll go again too.

Keep reading to see the photo gallery.

In case you hadn’t heard about this already, pay attention to the last piece of nonsense courtesy of the authoritarian party controlling the Spanish government, the Partido Popular (Popular Party, also know as PP.)

As you may know, in Spain we speak several different languages. The official one is Spanish, spoken in the whole territory, but in some areas Spanish coexists with one or more local languages: Galician, Basque, Catalan, Valencian, Aragonese… However, the fascists in control of the government don’t like this a bit. They want a pure castillian race speaking only Spanish, and they’re proceeding in the same way as Hitler when he tried to destroy everything that wasn’t his aryan race (there, it took me just ten seconds to do a Godwin.)

So what great idea did the retards from PP have this time? They decided to rename Catalan and Aragonese! My guess is that they are trying to erase every mention of these languages from official government documents, hoping that we will forget our mother languages. So far this law has only passed in the administrative region of Aragón, just west from Catalonia, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the same in other regions.

Who do we have to thank for this great, great idea? Her name is Luisita Fernanda Rudi, who is currently the president of the Aragón county council, and also president of the NazPopular Party of Aragon. As an unrelated note, her daddy was a member of the military on the side that helped Hitler’s buddy Francisco Franco take power. I’m suuuure this is of no relevance.

The bitch (right) and and owl. Photo courtesy of Los Genoveses.

Keep reading, there’s more.

I’m by no means an expert in music, but I can tell when I see a good performance. Last week I went to one of those. The event was part of the Tears of Today Tour 2012, which was just a couple of performances by several artists: one in Tokyo and another in Osaka.

I was invited by Luschka. She’s the singer in one of the bands (named after her), and she also plays the keyboards in another. Shameless plug here: she’s also my coworker.

The Japanese music industry sucks. Look at bands like AKB48 or Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ). If you are living in Japan then you must be sick already of seeing them everywhere.

In case you hadn’t heard about them, I’m going to share the pain:

AKB48 is an all-girl band composed by *64* members, whose only talent is being young and cute. They jump around in the stage singing without much grace, but that doesn’t matter much, because their fans (mostly male otakus) only care about their looks.

They started in their own theater in Akihabara, where they performed daily in front of their fans (they still do). The group is actually named after the Akihabara district.