My old Canon flash gave up the ghost somewhere between Taichung and Tokyo. Luckily my ancient Vivitar flash got plucked from the garage just before we walked out the door weeks before. My trusty old Vivitar doesn’t speak modern Canon hot shoe lingo, so I was forced to shoot completely manual.

I worked it out as I went along. Lucky for me I had been listening to the back catalog of Shutters Inc episodes from down under. It was like a refresher of my college photo courses in my earbuds. The results follow. Notice how the shots get better as we progressed through the evenings.

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Caught off the coast of Bar Harbor, Maine on a whale watching tour.

Had a nice trip to Baker Island National Park. Participated in the National Park Service “Feed the Mosquitos” tour. They said bring a lunch. I didn’t think they meant me.

Saw lots of nice sea birds. Downloading the pictures now. Bent a pin on my flash card reader. Using the slowwwwwww interface on my camera, and of course, burning camera battery power to do it.

I need to lower my core body temp and get my zen back.

Wish me luck.

Tomorrow we go to sea.

Today’s Picture, An American Redstart in flight.

It’s in reverse time order. I hope you enjoy it. Still processing pictures. I’ll post tons here once I get the site updated. Finally getting over jet lag, so I might actually get some work done on my projects.

10:34 pm – Saturday – Best Yet
Saturday was the best day yet. We logged a few new species, but more importantly the sun came out. The sun has been pissing me off, refusing to shine through the Typhoon. Today saw an end to that. The mountain top crater lake was still fogged in, but the rest of the day was bright and sunny. We got tons of bird pics and got a good long look at a Japanese fox.

This evening we had another monster dinner. Great food and lots of it. We’ve moved further north and we can see Russian territory from here. We’re in Rausu, pronounced Rause, like Grouse. After dinner, Chris took Nikos and me to a Fish Owl watch and we saw three Fish Owls. Mom, Dad, and Baby.

The owls are pretty awesome, and I’m really glad I tore the house apart before leaving to find my 20 year old flash. It’s completely manual and doesn’t talk to my camera, but it did the job. I got some great owl pictures. I think we’re going back tomorrow night for more. But tomorrow during the day we’re taking an afternoon cruise up the coast to see brown bears. I begged off on a whale watching tour we found out about at the owl watch. They couldn’t tell me what types of whales they were seeing, and photographing whale tales isn’t as interesting as trying to catch a Humpback breach or Spinner Dolphins launch themselves out of the water.

Each day bring more treasures to remember. Our guide, Chris, has been working really hard to keep us motivated and moving to find new species. He’s doing a great job. He’s also making sure the hotels know about my food problems and they’ve been great at accommodating me.

Broke radio silence today for a little while. Martha was doing the wash, and I got online to email the Worldcon folks about getting ahold of video from the Hugo Awards. We have no Internet and no cell coverage. Hopefully it will all work out before we leave. I also used the cell to call Marc, Dad, and Julie. Dad’s OK. Marc told us about someone trying to break in to our house. They broke a window, but didn’t get in. No more jokes about breaking into my house to podcast. Julie needed a steel pin in her foot. She’s recovering at our house where she can have access to a bed, bath, and laundry all on one level. Hopefully this will dissuade anyone from trying to rob us again. Thanks to our neighbor our stuff is safe.

Monday we’ll be in Tokyo and able to get online again. I hope wherever you are, you’re enjoying life too.
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:08 pm – Typhoon Too Soon
Looks like all the rain is a result of a Typhoon hitting Japan. We’re catching the northern most part of it, and it’s heading east, away from major population centers. Tomorrow looks like a rain day. Our plan is to find a cafe with bird feeders and try to get some pictures of some woodpeckers coming in for feeding. Failing that, we’ll look for an Internet cafe bolted on to a coin-op laundry.

We’re looking at 2-3 days of rain. That’s most of the rest of our bird watching tour. I could get so many sympathy points if I could get this post online before it was all over. Such is my lot in life. I probably won’t be able to post this until we’re done bird watching and in Kyoto or Tokyo touring.

Poor me.
Current Music: Japanese Engineering Competition on TV
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:06 pm – Any Day Birding is Better Than a Day at Work
Just got back from our first full day of bird watching in Hokkaido. We went out before dawn and walked around a small overlook. We’re in the area of the east Hokkaido marshes and there are Japanese Red Crowned Cranes here. The pre-breakfast walk was overcast and grey with just a little bit of drizzle falling from the sky.

Breakfast at the “Woody Hotel & Restaurant” (the real name, I kid you not) was excellent as expected. Dinner set the pace last night with 6 courses that made me feel like a judge on Iron Chef. Each course was better than the next and they went out of their way to make certain nothing they were serving me would cause me problems. If you haven’t been following my blog the only things I can eat are rice, raw fish, and cardboard. Just kidding, but I do have problems with dairy, wheat, soy, onions, and peppers. The first course was a sashimi of Halibut. We also had salad and oysters (raw for me, baked for everyone else). They even made a soup with a poached tomato and a minced chicken meatball for me. Martha grabbed that and I asked for raw oysters. Martha did eat her baked oyster, her first. I’m really proud of her. Then a grilled fish course, which was perfectly cooked. Then a beef stew which fell apart and tasted awesome. Finally dessert, home made soft serve ice cream made with local Hokkaido milk. I got a very nice fruit plate.

After breakfast we started our tour of the marshes in earnest. Chris is our driver, tour leader, and guide. He did an excellent job bringing us to where the birds were. This is major league cool, and much less stress than trying to drive and find our way like we did in Ireland. They drive on the “wrong” side of the road here, so we would have been dangerous to ourselves and others.

We drove from spot to spot and saw some great birds. The best part was actually finding some Cranes. The JRC Cranes are mostly gone now, or living in the marsh, which has 5 foot tall plants hiding them. Still we managed to see 8-10 JRCCs in various locations. For me, the pictures really tell the story. We saw lots of Carrion and Thick Billed Crows, Black Kites, and Stone Chats. We also saw lots of woodpeckers and various types of tits. Yes, tits, that’s their name; get your mind out of the gutter.

The downer for me was the cloudy sky. The clouds were thick although they only occasionally dropped rain on us. The real problem was lack of light. The Beast eats light like a Hummer drinks gasoline. There was just never enough light, especially when I was trying to shoot woodpeckers or passerines in flight. Still, any day birding is better than a day at work. Hey, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t kvetch a little.

My photos are sunk to my iPod. Now that I have backups it’s time to see what I got and delete the ones I don’t want.
Current Music: Jazz coming from the restaurant below
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, hokkaido, holloway, japan

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02:05 pm – Sushi and Hot Tub
The Woody Hotel and Restaurant continues to amaze and delight. We had huge amounts of the freshest sushi for dinner tonight. Also on the menu was a crab gratin and a crab egg custard. Sushi was huge. I couldn’t eat any more when it was almost done. Then the main course showed up. It was pork, I had a little, but I was stuffed. Mostly I ate the veggies. I have no idea how the pork was cooked, but it was tender, sweet and delicious.

Diner was finished with ice cream for the rest and some of the sweetest watermelon I’ve ever had. I forgot to mention the African wine I had with dinner was great.

Following dinner we talked some about digital photography. I learned some and taught some. Then we went for a soak in the On-Sen (don’t ask me to spell) the Japanese soaking hot tub.

Still full, very relaxed and going to bed soon.
Current Music: Flagpole – Michelle Malone
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:04 pm – Wed Morning Woody
We flew into Kinshiro last night, no Sapporo. This is eastern Hokkaido. It’s the least developed, and the most natural. So far it’s been stunningly beautiful. It’s very very green and very cool compared to Yokohama. There’s also much less humidity.

It’s 6:45 am and we’re getting ready to drive over to the marsh and look for Japanese Cranes before breakfast. Last night they served an awesome dinner. Bird noise. Gotta go.
Current Music: Shhhh Be Very Very Quiet. We’re Hunting Duck.
Tags: birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:03 pm – Mountains and Marshes
Moves from the marshes of east Hokkaido to the mountains today. Lots of time in the car. Lots of rain and clouds. Saw a few new species, but not many. Still very happy being here. We knew when we booked the tour it was the wrong time of year, so we’ll take what we can.

Still it’s very relaxing seeing the mountain lakes. We had lunch at a lake as blue as copper sulfate solution. Now we’re in our new guest house, nestled in the woods about 200 meters from a crater lake on an active volcano.

We stopped at the tourist place down the road to see what birds were out. There’s a natural hot spring right by the boat ramp to warm your feet before and after going in the water. It’s a nice reminder that there’s still an active volcano under our feet. Sweet.
Current Music: Sciurus Carolinensis – George Hrab
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:01 pm – Just Off The Boat, ah Plane
Right off the plane things were very different. This area isn’t very heavily built up or populated. Plus, Hokkaido smells like apples.

Saw a Japanese Red Fox as we were leaving the airport.

Freaked out when I saw the trees. They had these long ephemeral trails coming off their crowns. It looked like some mystical energy heading up to the sky. Since I don’t believe in that stuff, I postulated that they were some sort of orchard trees with something like a smudge pot to keep them warm against the cold night.

It turned out they were columns of insects. I don’t know if they were hatching or mating, but it was strange and very cool. Pictures to come.
Current Music: Trust Me – George Hrab
Tags: 2007, briding, fischer, holloway, japan

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02:00 pm – 30,000 Feet Over Tokyo
Met up with Chris, our birding guide. Turns out he’s from the U.K. Seems like a nice guy, but we’ve only spent a few minutes together before getting on the plane. I’m selfishly unwinding on the other side of the plane. For some reason ANA put us all a few rows apart from each other. Originally, I was going to move back over by Martha, but hell, it’s a short flight and I’m grooving to George Hrab and it’s a short flight. I haven’t been able to listen to much music so far on this trip. This is nice, just me in my own little iPod fueled world with Geo as my personal sound track.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before but Geo and MoShang are pretty much the only things I can listen to these days and still do work. I find everything else to be too much of a distraction. The view of Northern Japan, the mountains, and the sea side towns is awesome. The mountains are a deep emerald green. The sea side towns seem to be covered with fields from here. If the rice here is like it was in Taiwan, it’s still early in the growing season and the plants are making a light green sea cut unto neat squares.

We’re over the sea now. High high up. I can’t spot anything through the broken clouds. Killing some time taking silly photos with Photo Booth. Mostly stuff on my iPod and my EFF shirt as the background. Check my Flickr feed for the silliness.

Descending into Sapporo now. First look has sun right in my eyes. Hard to see anything. First impressions of Hokkaido. No massive civilization structures like you see around Tokyo. I can see fields and rivers but no cities. One small town. Coming down now. Time to shut off the ‘tronics.
Current Music: ‘Ya Famous? – George Hrab
Tags: 2007, birding, fischer, holloway, japan

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September 3rd, 2007
06:09 pm – Not Quite Lost
Most of the clothes are dry now. Just the heavy stuff is still tumbling. I’m starting to think about how I get out of here. There’s a large road in front of me and a train station behind me, but I don’t know where the train goes or what line it is.

I’m feeling adventurous so I’m thinking about the train. I’ll check the station and see if I can figure out if it will get me anywhere near the hotel. If not, I’ll start walking north to see if I can catch a cab.

Total cost for drying $7. Laundry cost = $17. Cab $10. Plus 2 hours of my time. If you factor in the hotel costs laundry would have cost me over $300. And don’t give me any shit about my billing rate. I don’t make my billing rate to do laundry. Even if I paid myself $50/hour I’m still ahead of the game. Plus, this was a real experience for me.

On to snapping pictures with the laptop camera since I didn’t bring The Beast with me.
Current Music: Why Don’t You Get A Job – The Offspring
Tags: fischer, holloway, japan, laundry, nippon2007, yokohama

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06:07 pm – Yokohama – I’m doing the laundry
As with all things travel related, you pay with cash or time. Worldcon just ended and I immediately ran out to the local coin-op laundry. Let me put it this way, in about 20 minutes every pair of underwear and socks I own will be clean. I let my cache of clean laundry get very low. I blame frugality and the high cost of laundry at our hotel. It costs me $7 for 2 pair of undies at Marshalls. To wash one pair at the hotel is $6. The costs aren’t quite as bad for slacks and shirts, but you get the drift.

It’s actually cheaper to buy new undies (assuming I was at Marshalls) than to get the old ones cleaned.

So I’m here in Yokohama on the back streets at the local coin op. It’s actually pretty cheap to wash the clothes. About $10 to get 3 machines running and washing 5+ days of clothes for both of us. Drying is underway now. $1 buys 10 minutes and I’m spreading out the clothes over 3 machines in the hopes of getting back to the hotel sooner rather than later.

This is actually a really nice street. There’s a subway stop a block away and the laundry is next to a 7-11 type store. The locals are out in force walking down the narrow streets with their kids and dogs. I’m usually scared when I’m on travel about being outside my element. But the people here are very polite and nice and I’m just not worried about anything. I didn’t even think twice to leave my laptop in the street while checking the laundry. I would never do that at home.

Tonight is the Dead Dog Party for WorldCon. We can finally party down with the rest of the staff. WorldCon – Nippon2007 – Is now history. It felt really good to be party to making it happen. The Japanese did a hell of a job, and the number of walk-ins we got was off the charts for a US WorldCon. I’ve never seen the same number of walk-ins at a WorldCon. The Japanese organizers really deserve credit for doing a ton of work up front.

Peggy Rae Sapienza toured a small town about an hour out into the country from here just before the con. She said the local book store had wrappers around every sci-fi, fantasy, anime, and manga giving info about Nippon2007. What a great idea! I hope we can get the US, Aussie, and European WorldCon staff to do the same thing in the future. I’m sure they would see a lot more walk-ins as well.

I really hope I can get a cab back to the hotel from here.
Current Music: Have You Ever – The Offspring
Tags: fischer, holloway, japan, yokohama

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September 2nd, 2007
09:44 am – Sunday Morning Worldcon
Working through my morning routine. Breakfast from the 7-11 type store: Boiled eggs, breakfast sushi, onigiri (today’s had the blue dot outside and something with lots of mayo inside), and coffee shots in can. $15 for two of us. Martha also got a canned latte and a steamed bun in the shape of a pig. The buns are very cute. I told her to bite the head off first to keep it from suffering.

I’m still working on script ideas for my This Day in Alternate History episode. I want to marry off Christiana to Godzilla at the end. I need to check with CE to make sure she can channel Nina Kimberly The Merciless for that one.

Waiting for results of Parsec awards and transmitting information to the world as I get it.

Next up on the menu, Kaffeeklatsche with Cory Doctorow, scouting for locations to film, and then back to the news room.

-Paul
Current Mood: [mood icon] relaxed
Tags: convention, fiction, japan, nippon2007, science, world

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September 1st, 2007
07:49 pm – Worldcon 2009 Site Selection
Just got the unofficial report from the Worldcon 2009 Site Selection Committee.

The winner is Anticipation in Montreal, CA.

Congratulations on all the hard work to the Anticipation team.
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Lift Off – RIAA (Robotic Intergalactic Astro-Artists)
Tags: world science fiction convention, worldcon

First pass through Tokyo. No sign of Godzilla. He must be sleeping. I hope he shows up for the interview or I’m going to be really pissed. I didn’t come all this way not to get 5 minutes with the big man himself.

Got to the Intercontinental Grand Yokohama this afternoon. Wicked cool place. Massive. I think the restaurants are all 5 star gourmet or something. $100/person for a meal. We went a la cart to save a little money. I don’t mind paying for a good meal, but I couldn’t enjoy it as tired as I am.

Mur Lafferty’s ears are burning.

Had dinner in the Italian place. They were very accommodating to the fact that I can barely digest anything anymore. Great roast pork and veggies. Martha had a pizza. Great food, but very expensive. Thankfully snacks and drinks aren’t that outrageous.

Got Martha settled in the Newsletter staff room with Matsushita-san. Met some of the staff. Sean, who we met last year, is here and he’s translating again. He’s a life saver. I actually managed to translate some japanese into english for someone contributing to the news letters. But then there was nothing else to do, so I abandoned Martha and Matsushita-san in favor of a chat with Nobilis and sleep.

Need to hunt up some public domain footage and audio of Godzilla and the signing of the documents that ended WWII. Need background material for my interview with Big-G.

The Beast is being held captive by Japanese Customs. They want money. Hopefully I can get a translator to help me in the morning. I really need The Beast back on my shoulder.

I need to pay better attention to some things. I really do. Who goes on a birding trip and forgets their birding camera? Yours truly, that who.

As soon as I figured it out I jumped on the Coconut Telegraph and started beating the jungle drums. The tribe woke up on Tweeter and Skype and came to my rescue. Marc, a.k.a. Grailwolf, offered to pick the camera up from home and ship it to me in Asia. Marc is a brave man, and is now learning how far down the rabbit hole you go when engaging in international shipping.

The hope is that the camera will meet me in Japan. It’s an expensive mistake, but not as bad as if I had to buy a whole new one. We’ll be bringing home a nice gift for Marc and his new bride Heather. They asked for a Japanese school girl. I don’t know what the limit is on those, we’ve got 3 requests now. I wonder if I can get them in the duty free shop.

Got to Japan and was able to get free Internet from the ANA airlines lounge which I think was a level below where I was charging my laptop. Not great throughput, but enough to get email and see that Mark and Marc had been in contact and all was being taken care of.

Martha and I had sushi in Narita Airport in Japan. Oh man, it was awesome. It was fresh and flavorful, and very close to the best I’ve ever had. I can’t wait to taste it outside the airport. My assumption is that airport sushi should be a 6-8 on a scale of 1-10. Which means it can be a whole lot better outside the airport.

The trip to Taiwan was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Didn’t realize Taiwan is 1 hour behind Japan. So our 3.5 hour trip became 2.5 hours. We caught a gypsy cab to the hotel. For a while I thought we were being taken for a ride, but the cost was reasonable and even though I thought we were going in circles, we weren’t. The hotel was nice, and we dealt with the first leg of adjusting to the new time zone.

OK. The hotel was better than nice. It was actually pretty cool. And fried eggs on the American Breakfast side of the buffet were a delight. The hotel staff were amazing. They got us a cab to the bullet train to Taichung and let us pre-pay. The train hit a top speed around 300 Kph. That’s about 186 Mph! It was so smooth and fast it was awesome and very very clean.

Mark Forman met us at the station and took us to our hotel. Then we toured a city south of Taichung where they do a lot of fishing. That’s were the current batch of Flickr Photos were taken. Today we’re supposed to hit the electronics markets. Mark and I are going to see if maybe we can’t think of doing some things to introduce some products into the US market. Who knows, maybe we’ll find the next Tickle Me Elmo.

I’m testing it out with some pictures I took at a Falconry lesson in Ayre, Scotland in August 2005.

These night shots just make the whole thing look awesome.

link

Saturday night I’m covering the Hugo Award Nominees Party (a.k.a. The Hugo Losers Party) when I almost make an ass out of myself. I blew my introduction to David Brin but I made a nice recovery. I had the honor of introducing Mr. Brin to Vint Cerf (one of The Fathers of The Internet) at Bucconeer in 1998. Recalling this to Mr. Brin was the only thing that kept me from looking like a fool. Mr. Brin mentioned that he had been trying to get back in touch with Mr. Cerf but didn’t have his new email, as he moved from MCI to Google. In my new job, I’ve met some people at Google, so I figure I have a shot at it, and offer to help reestablish the connection.

Sunday night we get off the plane. Luggage is taking forever so Martha goes to get The Famous Blue Prius while I await bags. 50 minutes later the bags arrive and I’m waiting at Door 6 of Dulles for her to pull up. At this point I’m steamed. I’m cranky and hungry. I’m pissed that the luggage took so long. I’m pissed that getting the car is taking so long. I’m trying to chill out and get my Zen back, when a Jag pulls up to the curb right in front of me. “Oh great, now Martha won’t be able to see me when she gets here.”

Who walks up and starts loading bags into his car? If you guessed Vint Cerf, give yourself a prize!

Weirder than fiction I know. But I had a very quick handshake with Vint and got his new email address for David Brin.

Song for today: Synchronicity by the Police (Another suburban family morning / Grandmother screaming at the wall )

What? I hear you say, “Don’t be a pussy, you could have been doing real work.”

Well it doesn’t stack up to picking fruit, mining, or other real work, but having your ass in a car 8 hours a day to do coverage tests is real work. Just ask a trucker. Maybe I’m not driving on highways, but then, he’s not dodging every little kid on summer vacation who wants to make it into the newspapers by being run over.

I shit you not, I dodged 10 kids today who came right at me. Well over 100 heard the big rental car coming and got off the street. But these 10 just came right at me.

Here’s an idea of the ground I’ve covered in the last 3 days. You can see where I give you a 1 mile scale in purple. Now realize I’ve probably drive most streets more than once, just to double back and get the little dead ends and finish the grid pattern. I’m not saying where the picture is, because the work folks might have a cow. The resolution has been cut down, and the data isn’t what you would really see on our plots, I fudged a bit of it. But I wanted you to all see the sheer mileage I’ve been driving.

The good part was the podcasts. I listened to everything I could think of, and then some. I even went back to some I’ve cancelled to give them another try. They still suck, so I’m staying away from them. Such is life.

I also took time to check in on my beer auction. Over 7500 bottles of beer and another 3500 bottles of wine went on the block in DC. If it wasn’t for Saturday pickup, I would have stayed away. I got some great bargains, so long as the stock was not too old and well maintained.

Overall, I think I got 1 case of booze, and probably 12 cases of beer. The stuff I got is all imported. Most costs $3 to $10 a bottle. I got some of it for $5 a case! I guess I won’t be buying beer from Norm’s for a while.

I want to thank Charlie The Beer Guy for his advice. Without him, I wouldn’t have clue number 1 on which beers to pick. I’m sure you’ll be hearing the beer burps on future ADD Cast episodes.