To which I replied that comparing her to a monkey is a bit harsh, but she does look a bit like the Earl of Greystoke, Lord of the Apes. As she looked at me dumbfounded, I realized she had never heard of the original Tarzan apart from the Disney adaptation. So I dug out a torrent of the movie Greystoke and we watched it together.

The movie is just as good as I remember it from my childhood. It was Christophe Lambert's first major movie role. It was also Andie McDowell's first role so next up on the movie list is "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

It's shiny, it's thin, it looks good... Like all my favorite Apple stuff. I don't even care if it has lousy WiFi — I live in a 50m² apartment with only 2 rooms separated by wooden walls, I am never more than 5m away from my Time Capsule.

But will I get one? I'm not so sure. In the current set of things, probably not. This is why:

1. As I said earlier, my home is small — albeit nice and cosy — as most people in Tokyo who are not on expatriate expense accounts. My main computer is a MacBook Pro which sits at all time on the arm rest of my sofa: there is no table/desk to put it.
   So buying an iPad would mean relegating the MacBook Pro to a closet until I need it for higher level tasks — such as dumping photos into Aperture or writing code for home projects... Putting a ¥200.000 laptop in a closet feels wrong, but maybe I could live with it.

This is a coffee table, not a desk...

1. filler
2. I spend 3h of every weekday commuting to and back from work. I could really see myself enjoying movies, TV shows, my feed reader and internet/email on an iPad much more than on my iPhone as I do now. However, there is no way in hell I would ever pay another ¥4000 or so to Softbank for an unlimited 3G connection in addition to the one tied to my iPhone. You can only bleed your customers so much...

So unless the coming weeks see an announcement (I'm thinking iPhone 4.0 tonight) by Apple or Softbank of either tethering your iPhone to your iPad or an extra iPad 3G SIM at ¥500 for iPhone owners, I don't think I will buy the iPad.

Last time I saw it, there was no snow. Now it's all white. See another beautiful photo made this morning from much closer.

I will try to update this post tonight with some photos I took with my DSLR in between brushing my teeth and putting my pants on – always in a rush in the mornings...

Funny thing is all the people I saw, without exception, in the Onitsuka Tiger shop browsing for shoes were already wearing Onitsuka kicks. I guess I'm not the only one who's addicted...

Moving company will come tomorrow at 1pm. I will have to pack up all the camera gadgets and computers in the morning.

P.S. If anything is strange with this post it's because I am typing it on my iPhone with the Worpress app.

As you might have seen in a previous post, I will soon be moving to a smaller apartment closer to Tokyo center. This causes some minor logistic problems like: where to put all my stuff?

Since it seems apparent that my girlfriend will not reduce the size of her consequent wardrobe and shoes collection, I am quietly expected to get rid of as much of my stuff as deemed necessary...

Having a pretty long 1 hour commute where I can sit most of the time, I read quite a lot in the train which has left me with quite a big pile of books over the past year and a half. And although I love my books, if I have to choose between a bulky library and my electronic gadgets, I will not hesitate long.

These are all Science Fiction novels in English (I've been going through the list of Hugo Award nominees on wikipedia) and are very hard to sell here: Book Off will not take them and I am yet to sell any of them on Amazon Marketplace. So rather than just dumping them with the magazines in the ゴミ, I offer to give them out to anyone interested.

Please check out the list on my book giveaway page and contact me if anything whets your interest. I will keep that page updated with my stock and put comments here if I add any books to the list.

The view from the living room should be like the picture below on clear days (albeit from a lower vantage point but I should still be able to glimpse the Fujisan). Can't wait to be doing cool Tokyo timelapses from my own window.

fujisan view - the weird white triangular building is Nakano

This time, my company does not wish to rent it for me and take it out of my salary as I am a local contract employee. So this is my first foray into actually signing a rental contract and paying all the fees myself upfront. So lets break it down:

• 1st month of rent (you pay your rent in advance in Japan) = ¥220.000
• Moving in on 26th of June so 5 days worth of rent until 30th = ¥36.700
• 敷金 - deposit, 2 months of rent = ¥440.000
• 火災保険 - fire insurance = ¥25.000
• 鍵交換代 - lock change fee = ¥35.000 (that's a hell of a lot for a lock!)
• 町内会費 - neighborhood association membership fee for 2 months = ¥500

For a grand total of ¥757.200 or three quarters of a million yen... upfront... it hurts...

And actually, I should count myself lucky, this is rather cheap and most of it is the deposit which I'll mostly get back. Apartments here, especially new ones, often have a 礼金 which is also called key money and is a nice gift of 2 months of rent to the owner.

Thinking of all that money makes me a bit more partial to the idea of buying a place for myself...

But one thing I still can't get a hang of is monchrome conversion... This is a photo I took yesterday from the 27th floor of the Shinjuku L Tower (the Nikon Plaza showroom). From it, I made a version with each pre-defined setting of Aperture:

Default Monochrome - R30% G59% B11%

Red filter

Orange filter

Yellow filter

Green filter

But however many times I compare all these versions, I cannot tell which setting fits best... Anyone in the room with tips for me?