w00kie's ramblings

my head

Hi 👋, I’m François

I’m a French engineer who moved to Japan after my studies and will soon hit half of my life spent in Tokyo.

  • Lightopia around Tokyo Station

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    w00kie
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    This Saturday I went to 丸の内 around Tokyo station to see the Christmas lights and, much to my girlfriend’s dismay, I took a bunch of maniac photos with my trusty Ricoh GR Digital. I had seen an advertisement for the Christmas lightings in the train. It’s an event called Lightopia. They lit up the 2…

  • No Wii for Christmas

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    w00kie
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    Second raffle, same time, same place. This time they had 52 units up for the taking and 254 people showed up. A friend of mine had come to help me out, giving me a second chance to get one. But of course, since I’m officially cursed, they ended up calling all the numbers around our…

  • Still no Wii

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    w00kie
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    This morning they had a raffle for 30 units at my local 7eleven Holdings’ Itoyokado (that’s a department store). I got there at 9:45, grabbed a ticket and came back at 10:30 for the results. They had distributed 74 tickets that were supposed to count only for 42 units since families were supposed to have…

  • Steamy night at the plant

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    w00kie
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    A photo I took yesterday outside my office. There are huge condensers for the aircons that cool/heat the big factory under my office, they make plumes of water vapor that catch the lights at night and give the whole place an eerie feeling.

  • Koenji at 6am

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    w00kie
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    Took this photo saturday morning when I came back from Shinjuku empty-handed. The sun was just coming out over the horizon behind me.

  • I’m officially cursed

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    w00kie
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    That’s it, it’s official, the verdict has been given: I’m cursed. Today at lunch time we went out with a friend to an electronics shop deep deep in the countryside, 15 minutes away from the factory where we work, hoping to score a Wii so we could play some Wii Sports goodness for a week…

  • No Wii for me

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    w00kie
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    So I went to Shinjuku’s BicCamera at 5am on Saturday morning (btw, it’s incredible the number of puke puddles you can find around Koenji in the early morning…) hoping to score a Wii. Here is a map of the line I found there: quickmap The line was closed, BicCamera people were watching it every 15…

  • Night at the Onsen

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    w00kie
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    So as I told you, last weekend I went to stay the night at an onsen resort and I’m having mixed feelings on this little trip. I went to the Plaza Hotel in 鬼怒川温泉. The hotel was celebrating the 1st anniversary of its renewal, so we were hoping for something really nice. And the photos…

  • Momiji Lightup

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    w00kie
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    Momiji – 紅葉 – is the name of the Japanese maple tree, but it can also be read Kouyou, which is the color the leaves of trees take in autumn. Watching nature around this time of year is a huge event in Japan, almost as big as the cherry blossoms in spring. So last Saturday…

  • Onsen nation

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    w00kie
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    Next weekend is a 4-day weekend (well, it is if you take two days of since my company doesn’t care about official holidays). My girlfriend and I wanted to make a little trip, so we did what any japanese would do, buy a travel magazine, most of which selling you a one-night trip to an…

  • Wii Pre-orders

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    w00kie
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    I just received an email this instant from Amazon. Here’s what it says: 『Wii』 予約受付日のお知らせ！ 11/17（金）より、予約を開始いたします。購入ページへのリンクは、受付予定日（時間は未定です）にゲームストア にて表示されますので、ご確認ください。 注文数が確保できる商品数を上回った場合は、注文のキャンセルをさせていただく場合があります。その際はＥメールでご連絡いたします。 Which basically means that Amazon opens their pre-orders for the Wii tomorrow (no info about the exact time though). Now I’m torn between waiting in-line in the cold at BicCamera on the day of launch, Saturday December…

  • New Ticket Machines

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    w00kie
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    This weekend they changed the ticket vending machines in my station and it makes me feel a little bit closer to Tokyo when I buy my ticket every morning. On the left, the old busted early 80’s style machine with old-school orange monochrome screen. On the right, the new model they installed, exactly the same…

  • MIDGET II CLASSIC

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    w00kie
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    Sometimes you see really weird cars around where I live. And it being the official “uncool” capital of Japan, you usually get a pretty good laugh. Here’s a perfect example: It was parked yesterday in front of my office in the plant where I work at.

  • The Spammiest Spam Ever

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    w00kie
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    Today, I was checking out the daily comment spams that are caught by my trusty Spam Karma 2 filter and I encountered the king of spam comments, the one that trumps them all. It single-handedly boosted my average spam karma tenfold. Spam Karma: -546053 -2.5: Encrypted payload valid: IP not matching. -10: Fake Javascript Payload.…

  • 1 year in Japan

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    w00kie
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    Today was my 1st anniversary of coming to Japan. It’s been a great year for me, I really feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of things and it makes me feel great. I met a lot of great people here, had a lot of fun and learned a lot. One regret I have is that…