Monthly Archives: October 2007

GR Digital 2 – it’s official

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After my post 2 weeks ago about rumors of a new GR Digital coming out, Ricoh has now officially announced the GR Digital II for Christmas 2007.

Ricoh GR Digital II

It looks like a nice evolution over the older model: the same body with the addition of just one button on the side for manually popping up the flash, the same focus on lens quality over anything else, much faster RAW capture, a better screen and a ton of little features to make your life easier (horizontal/vertical level meter, fast shortcut buttons, focus helper, etc.) while keeping the full control of manual mode and no hand-holding.

In these conditions, I think I might be forced to buy it when it comes out... :)

A tip about teeth

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In exactly 4 days I will officially become a fully local employee in my company. My salary will be in Japanese Yens, I will pay Japanese taxes, be under a Japanese pension plan (although I still retain an extra pension plan in France as a bonus) and be protected by a Japanese health insurance.

Although this will only start from Thursday 1st, I already began receiving the Health Insurance's newsletter which has an English version for us foreigners. This is where I found this little gem:

A tip about teeth
We are now in the autumn.
You see, I would like something nice to eat.
Is everything fine in your mouth?
If plaque or tartar has formed on your teeth, let's use this opportunity to remove them.

Remove what? Plaque or teeth? Poor grammar or barbaric oral surgery practices? I let you be the judge... Anyways, this does nothing for my fear of Japanese dentists...

Moving Preparations

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Today, I took 2 hours out of my not so busy schedule and called all the utility companies to cancel and/or open the gas/electricity/water/internet contracts for my moving next week.

TEPCO moving webservice

To help with the process, I found this cool webservice by TEPCO, Tokyo's main electricity provider. You enter your old and new address and it will find the utility companies that serve the area codes in question. You chose the ones you use and it will give you a checklist of all the phone numbers you have to call. Moreover, if an electronic application form is available, it will give you the link and fill out all the information you already give it, radically speeding up the process.

Weirdest dream

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As my moving in date approaches I'm getting all the preparations done, canceling utilities contracts and setting up new ones, packing, etc; all of this stuff is racing around my head 24/7 and lately I started having really weird dreams.

I remember one vividly from last week. I was showing off my new apartment to my friends. Inside, it was the same really cool apartment as the one I'm moving into in real life, with the same price, but the dream one was not out in the boondocks, 20min into Saitama from Ikebukuro: this one was in 松濤, a very cool neighborhood just behind Shibuya where 2 of my very rich expatriate friends live. The problem is, a 60m2 apartment in a brand new building over there is nowhere near ¥140.000 a month, I guess it would be more around ¥600.000 and that would still be cheap.

So how could I find such an apartment for such a dirt cheap price? Well that's what I start explaining to my friends when we get there (I'm still in the dream here) and I tell them that there is no front door and that we have to come in through the windows...

New GR Digital possibly coming soon

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GR Digital - no moreAccording to the official Ricoh website, the GR Digital is now out of production. It had a good life, now it's over.

As you may know, I bought this camera last year after reading raving reviews and a friend of mine recommended it. A lot of photography enthusiasts own this camera in Japan and you can see that from the GR Digital photos on Flickr.

Its killer points were, among others:

  • a wide angle 28mm lens (convertible to 21mm with an extra adapter)
  • old school film-like grain with higher ISO
  • full manual mode
  • double clicker wheels for ultra-fast, one-handed option settings

All in a snazzy black magnesium body for a professional look&feel.

Now from the different rumors running around photography forums and camera shops of Shinjuku, it seems there might be a new version coming to replace my favorite camera in November/December of this year. I can't wait...

I found an apartment

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After waiting a week for an answer from the owner to the real-estate agent, we finally called him up yesterday and were told the apartment was ours.

my new apartment in Shiki

Now all I've got to do is have my company sign all the papers and we can set a date to move-in, hopefully by the beginning of November. I will be living in a 60m2 2LDK apartment on the 6th floor of a brand new building 2-minutes from Shiki station on the Tobu Tojo line. That's 20minutes from Ikebukuro by express and 37 minutes from where I take the company's bus in the morning to get to my office.

How to print without a printer in Japan?

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Living in Japan, we are often faced with tough quandaries, for example: in a typical closet sized Tokyo apartment, having a printer at home can take up a valuable portion of your living space. But then without a printer, you're often stuck in problematic situations, like last weekend when my girlfriend had some last minute changes to do to her resume and I wasn't at work to print it for her.

7eleven Net Services

But no worries! In the land of the combini on every city block, 7eleven is here to save the day. After registering on the Netprint website from Fuji Xerox, you can upload any document (an Apple Word document will fail so save it as a PDF first) to the web application that will give you an 8-digit code that you can write down or send directly to your keitai. You can then walk-in any 7eleven in Japan, go to the printer machine, select ネットプリント and type that code. 20円 for a black&white A4 print, 60円 for a color A4 print.