Box of books representing out with the old (and in with the new)!
This is a non-event announcement that confirms my phone broke last night.
I cannot be reached via LINE until I replace my phone, hopefully this week.
I’ve emailed peeps for whom I might expect a message within the week.
Walking events this weekend will still happen regardless of rain.
blessings
Rob
So my phone died during the walk, it was surprising to say the least. I know exactly where it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I can guess. But I haven’t. I don’t know for sure.
walking across. Gosh, okay, so I was walking across a river, I took a video of me walking across the river. And the video ended up on Google Cloud or on Google in Google Photos, I believe. And yet, by the time I walked to the end of the bridge, and turn the phone back on to check how you were I needed to turn the phone didn’t come back on. And I was like, Ah, that’s weird. Because it had just been working fine. Taking the video. And it wasn’t the battery. I mean, I, I had char, I had a battery pack to charge it. So I tried to charge it didn’t help. And so basically, I was without a phone for that dress that day. And I was like, Huh, because I was planning to meet my wife that day, I did not have a map of where I was going without the phone. Without the phone, I didn’t have a map. And without the phone, I couldn’t call Lynn. Fortunately, I do have her phone number memorized. And fortunately, I did know the name of where I wanted to go. Or maybe just the description was enough. It was an shibukawa. So I walked down the slope past the bridge. And it’s like, a very, not industrial area, but like a business area, but very few people were there. As in none the requirement anyway, but I looking around, I happen to see a woman just happened to come out of her front door. And I was like, Hello, I am trying to go to the to the shibukawa. Sky term. That’s a mispronunciation in Japanese, by the way to talk to me, I think that’s like, taught taught me is the Japanese version. And she’s like, Oh, yeah, just go down the street, go to the second light, which is pretty far and then turn right. And it go even further. And you’ll be there. And I was like, cool. And went to your it matched what was in my brain of how to go like, keep going for a bit and then turn right. So that was good news. And so I just I trusted her guidance and walk to the second light turned right. Walked for a little way saw convenience store, talk to the next guy as I Hey, where’s this thing? And he’s like, keep on going down the street. And it’ll be on your right and I was like, cool. So I got there easily enough. It was all fine. And that also that had been my one of my fallback plans was to know where I needed to go each night and just ask people along the way, Hey, where’s this thing? And they would give me finer and finer detail as I got closer and closer. So anyway, I got to the thing called Lin on their phone, explained the situation. Hey, can I borrow your phone? And uh, yeah, very, very friendly. So I’m glad about that. And called Lin. She was late due to traffic. She’s driving out to meet me. This was like date 10 I think day 10 No, it was day nine. And therefore the 16th of April and nine plus on the 14th of April. Sorry. Interesting. So
basically add 15 days during April, add fifth to subtract 15 days from the date in April to get my walk number so, April 16 was day number one of my walk. Today number nine of my walk was now I’m confused. Nine plus 15. When I say so 24. April 24. Why am I so confused anyway, fuck it. This has been recorded so I can figure out what just happened. So I believe it was April 24. It was day nine of my walk because I remember day 10 got wasted and I’ll tell you why soon. Matlin. It was interesting. After I changed into my outdoor clothes, I was not allowed to sit on certain chairs in the waiting area, and it wasn’t like fancy chairs but like these chairs are okay, but those chairs are only for people who are wearing the right clothes. Dude, okay, whatever. didn’t even try to find it. I was like, okay, fuck off whatever. I don’t care. But fair enough on the woman for like, coming up to me did let me know. But it’s a weird rule. Anyway, cuz they can’t distinguish who paid I guess unless I have the right clothes on. Anyway. I so Linden Lin came is like Wow, good to see you again. You know, and you know, connected and shared and a lot of dots. And then we decided to leave. She didn’t want to do she didn’t want to take more time to do the onsen. That night. That’s the hot spring. So because it was too late for her to get there. And so we drove she drove me the what would have been a 45 minute walk to the hotel, where I had booked a single room and they were like, to me, they said there’s no double rooms available. Sorry, get out of here. But when Lin called she was able to negotiate that we stayed in double room. I don’t think an extra price I’m not sure. But that was great. That was I think the hotel taught to me, I think video is the place right after the five story hotspring which is kind of cool because like each the women’s side and the men’s side were on opposite sides of this like spaceship looking thing on top of a four storey tower and could just be like looking out onto the world over the rice fields with your with your dangling hanging. And so it’s an interesting kind of experience to be up there. And relatively cheap for the price it’d be it’d be cool to go with the men’s group or something. So I went to the hotel, completely exhausted just like sleep. And next day went to it’s funny to hear Lin tell the story of the next night which I’ll try to tell here. The hotel wasn’t I mean, it wasn’t anything to really to write home about his late they had food they had an onsen or a hot spring. Once a cold Yeah, like a public bath thing, but only One group at a time could use it. It wasn’t like, per gender. But that was good. So we, we booked our time and we went in there and didn’t do anything. Besides just take a shower, and I just went back to sleep. But I can’t think of anything else. I can’t even think of anything else that they’re worth talking about. The next day, Len drove me to the phone shop, to try to get my phone replaced, because I had a warranty
insurance on it. And they were like, nope, because I was traveling. And they couldn’t figure out how to prove that I would get the phone back to them if they gave me a loaner phone. And I was like, I’m not coming back to your shop here is too far away from my house. And they couldn’t get in touch with it was really a frustrating situation. Let me be very direct about that. It was super frustrating because their story kept changing. They were like, Oh, yeah, we can do it. And then Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And then oh, maybe we can do it right now and get you the new phone then? Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And like back and forth kind of thing. And I’m not sure why that was happening. And the poor girl, they’re like going back and forth between us and heard the back office of their little shop. But what if what, God? It’s unbelievable to me what the final answer that they gave, like, basically, they couldn’t. I can barely even tell the story without getting angry about is it makes no sense to me. They couldn’t get in touch with the phone shop. near my, near our house near our station, there’s an au shop. They tried to call the shop. But apparently, they’re busy or whatever, and wouldn’t answer the phone or have the wrong phone. I mean, who knows. But because they couldn’t get in touch with the shop, to confirm that I could take the phone, the loaner phone back to that shop. They said they can’t do it. Which is semi sorta like, Okay. However, there are hundreds of au shops in the Tokyo area, any of which I’d be happy to bring the phone back to. Then they said, Oh, we can’t give you a loaner phone because your plan is a five g plan. And we only have four g phones. And I was like, dude, if that is the actual reason, why did you spend an hour going back and forth? Trying to figure out? I mean, it’s like it’s completely nonsensical, because Anyway, my phone was being used as a 4g phone through the backwaters of deriving their area through these, like not very large city areas that don’t have 5g towers. Good on them. Fair enough. Who cares? Just give me a phone. Right? So they know that from the very outset, what’s your name? What’s your phone number, therefore, they have my account information. They know it’s a 5g account, if that’s what they care about. Oh guy was so frustrating. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? spent an hour with this bullshit. God, it was a nightmare. And I mean, of the First World variety, but it’s like, dude, just God, you know? Cuz it was because of that kind of crap that I didn’t walk that day. And so there actually was some upside to that like Lynette to spend time with Lynn and who drove around and all that was great. But, Dude, come on, you know, just it was super frustrating. And I don’t even know if it’s really going to come across in the vert in the text version of this as I, as I’m reading this by voice right now, but it was very fucking frustrating. So let me go on the good side of things. At one point. I, gosh, okay, so I couldn’t get the phone to turn on at all, like I would pull the power button
for five seconds and it wouldn’t turn on even if I had it plugged into a battery. And I believe I had it plugged into a battery that for enough of the previous time that it should have been charged, but the, the girl at the shop, held the button for like a full 20 seconds. And that caused the phone to wake up. So whereas I was like, hold it down for five seconds, she’s like, none, I know, you got all that down. And so anyway, we were able to get it to power up. But the operating system wouldn’t fully boot and load and we’re just like, paying or reboot or whatever. And we couldn’t get like the first screen. Although at first it looked like it was it was okay. Like, oh, hey, it’s working. Yay. But then it would power cycle it would reboot itself shortly thereafter. So I don’t know what was happening with the phone, but I did use Lynne’s phone and I looked up online. And someone was saying Oh, his phone kept rebooting because he didn’t have enough storage on his device. Which is like, kind of a bad architecture. Like why wouldn’t they keep enough space but you know, anyway, the I Well, I was just I had been taking long videos, maybe the the, the SD card is was too full. And that’s what caused it to crash. So the shop they’re like, Oh yeah, we have SD cards here you go in there only like five times the the normal price of SD cards as I know, I see what you’re doing there. As I was about to go down the street isn’t we’re not that far in the boonies. We went and got another SD card that was hella bigger, like twice the size for half the price. And so I guess their their markup was four times the price anyway. They were selling up to 128 gigabytes for like, oh, seven teen 1000 yen, maybe I didn’t, I don’t have the numbers memorized. But we went to base we got it twice a size 256 gigabytes for like 5000 yen, I think. Anyway, it was a lot cheaper. And I put the new card into the old phone but still had the same problem. As I alright. That’s not the card. So that’s when we went back to the first time she just she basically press the power button real hard turned it on. I said, Oh, it’s kind of working. Maybe it’s the SD card. We went and got a new card came back because it wasn’t as at first is like, Oh, I guess it’ll be fine. But then crashed again very shortly. So we went back to the shop and that’s when we spent an hour back and forth back and forth. They’re like maybe we can do it. Maybe we can’t and then oh sorry at the end surprise. You have a 5g phone or a 5g contract. And we only have 4g phones. I was like yeah, that was so annoying. Anyway, anyway, anyway. linen I then we’re like okay, screw you guys. We went to lunch, then went she drove me to the the Hot Spring was called think money something money hot spring money Island i think is the translation con a Shima onsen, I believe. And then by that point it was 4pm by the time we finished with all of that, and not realistically enough time for me to walk to the the green village camp area,
Midori no Muna camp Joe. But because we drove there, we heard a song on the road, which was kind of surreal, lovely surprise, because it was singing When you wish upon a star. And I was like, I heard it. I was like, hang on. That’s music. And then Lynne was like, What’s that noise? After I had already parsed it, it was music and I had a pretty good idea of what song it was, is like, validating my theory that it was When you wish upon a star. And then Lynn’s like, What’s that noise? Like? Dude ain’t been listening to it for a while. But not to not to send me he’s, she’s driving, and whatever. But we got to toilet was it called planet toilet and planet restroom. So it’s planet or sorry, planet restroom and planet restaurant. And I was like, I knew the planet restaurant was closed. And I knew the planet rest room was open. So I was like, dude, I got to go to Planet restroom. You know, this amazing place called planet restroom. And it was just a restroom. And so that was a that was yet another example of something that’s like, you know, cool looking on the map in the name, but like, Yeah, not that cool in reality. But what was interesting slash cool in reality was Oh, and part of the reason that we waited a whole hour for them to go through their checklist. They wanted the phone to get charged up to at least 50%. So they knew it wasn’t the battery that was causing the problem. And so we’re like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for that which would ended up not helping, obviously. So anyway, we’ve wasted a lot of time, but that that shop when I’m not very impressed with that. Anyway, screw it, we, we went to Planet restroom, and it was like, and then went down to the green green camp area. We were the only people there as far as I could tell. And we rented out one of the bungalows. And then Lynn’s version of the story is that she wanted to go get some food. And I was like, No, too tired. And just wanting to eat the nuts that she brought. And so I didn’t even really think about that would even though being her husband, I should have known that she would like to go somewhere for food, but I was just like, not too tired. Couldn’t even like think about walking to the truck to drive to wherever. I just wanted to sleep, sleep sleep. And that’s what we did. So it was the bungalow was was fine. It was not too cold as she feared it might be and so she in her version of story, she’s like, okay, you just eat a few little nuts or anything. And to me it’s completely ample and fine. Like no need whatsoever to have more had she known her husband better what she could have done was not give me the nuts first of all because she she’s like, hey, here I am. Here’s all the stuff you wanted and gave me all these nuts and stuff. are maybe I didn’t even order it but she just gave them to me and I was like cool. Done. You know, that’s dinner for tonight. And so she, she knows me well enough that I think she could have made that guess and give that to me in the morning. But she doesn’t have the same patience I do to, like, let her for something and make it allow it to happen in its time. But she prepared and she like hey, go here’s your here’s your your dinner for tonight is what I was hearing and she she wanted for a snack for later anyway. Anyway, anyway, whatever. Um, so that’s the story about the phone. No, not even done yet. So then interestingly,
while the I had this dead phone, and we were driving to the green camp site, I got a call on the phone, and it’s the green camp green campsite, they’re like, we have you down for reservation, where are you? So we’re almost there. But it was cool. That might. So the SIM card on the phone was working fine. And the hardware was working fine. But so I could receive calls. But with the software, the O s, I couldn’t make calls couldn’t even log into the the OS itself. Not log in, but could you like boot the OS. But um, I could receive calls, that was a blessing. So for the next day and a half. I was able to use that phone to receive calls and certainly came in handy to have that as an option. Lynne called me a couple times, and Jason called me a couple of times during that time,
then, okay, so then that night, in the more annoying phone saga kind of thing. The call the, the, like the head office, so to speak up the phone guys and say, hey, my, here’s my name. here’s, here’s my phone number. Here’s my name. Here’s my secret code. And my phone is broken. And yes, I have insurance. And yes, I like using a new phone. But I’m not at home. I’m out and about and it won’t be back for a long time. And so can you send it to a hotel and you’re like, ma’am, and all of this is taking like double the time to communicate. Because it’s going from me in English to an English translator to a jet to Japanese guy in the backseat translator and back to me. And because Lynn’s not allowed to call on my behalf for my phone, but from my account, but finally they’re like okay, well we’ll send it to the hotel. What’s the address? And so then I get the phone to Lynn so she could read the address off in Japanese. You know, seidu gaco sorry, gaco Onsen, Honiara nanaka, Baba and then they’re like okay, Have you contacted the hotel to make sure it’s okay to receive something? Um, no, we just decided you were here during the conversation you know when we’re deciding which hotel and he’s okay please call them first. All right by call them hotels like sure the call the phone guys back that it’s it’s the the office and there’s like 1010 different people there answering phones. Hello, What’s your phone number? What’s your name? What’s your secret number? What happened? phone died. Okay. But um, my new phone Okay, you have insurance, but I’m traveling. So okay, what should we do about it? All right, send it to this address. And yes, we contacted them so you can send it Okay, what time do you want to send it? And so, these we said between 2pm and 4pm. And in order to arrive on this day, so we confirm the day confirm the location, confirm the address confirm the time and when you fit into the system, the system works well in Japan. So great. I try assume is going to be there. I did not Send it to the plays for the next day, which I could have and think about it probably should have, but didn’t because the next day was a long walking day. And the day that I sent it was going to be a short walking day. So I would have time to phone and get the phone set up that afternoon. Anyway, um, the next day, I spent walking using paper maps, and during the whole driving around town on the on day 10 to figure out what’s up and get the new phone, I also was in parallel, just in case we cannot get a phone I downloaded I took screenshots of the maps that I had prepared and organized the screenshots with the day numbers and printed the O so we had to go by a what’s it called, and SD, USB, USB storage device and buy it buy the device, we we went to a place that said they could print it from a file, but it would be like beautiful image quality like photograph quality pictures with 400 yen each. And I was like Ah, no, not gonna do that
i i doubt I can sell these and make that worth the price even though they would be nice quality paper. And they’re going to get all tore up anyway because I want to write on them as I’m walking. So we bought and I bought a USB storage, USB key for storage. And took that to convenience store. Which only printed JPEGs oh god so back to my computer. And that’s what we at that point we went to lunch back to my computer, converted the PNGs into JPEGs back onto the USB key back to the convenience store. plugged it in and printed like 24 odd sheets, which was that was fine in great nizi once again once I got into the system, it worked fine. It just it was annoying to get into that system but burnin six days worth of six days worth of pages. And then that night is when we contacted the the guys twice to have them send the send the phone to the next location anyway, the next day I use maps to walk to the next hotel and do what i the only thing I needed was to get started on the right road. So we like drove to know I walked Yeah, I walked from the bungalow to the front, the office which there was no one there we just dropped the key off at that thing. So I’m not able to ask anyone but looked at lens GPS looked at what I could see physically around me looked at my paper as I Alright, I Okay, I see which street I need to take. So I started taking that street wave goodbye to Lynn and lots of lots of kisses and hugs and walk walk walk wave goodbye. And it was very easy to use the paper maps. Very grateful for her support to get me sorted out with paper maps I would have been quite annoying to do a lot of walking. Had I had to do it. probably would have been a lot more expensive as well, because I would be like nah. Not willing, for example, to walk to the place where they had microSD cards at a good price, etc. But
so yeah, I, I using the map I was, there was a first time I was counting my steps. And I got a relatively good system, just count my left foot steps. And would mark mark each segment of the map where I needed to, like, walk to this corner turn here, as I marked out all the different bits, like this was 40 steps. This was 50 steps. And I hope I still have that page. I’ll go scan it right now if I do, because that’s an interesting little thing. Please don’t be thrown away. Please be here. Okay. Is it here? Wait, yes. Okay. Yeah, they’re still here. Good. So I’ll scan these. And so So yeah, I printed the maps and they were it was very easy to use to walk around. And so now, here I have the area that I walked around and this one here we go. Yeah. Okay, nice. Really glad I kept these. I had them in my trash. They didn’t make the cut yesterday. I had thrown them away, but they didn’t get released. I can just scan them very easily and put them on my website. I hope they scan. Okay, they’re all folded up. I mean, let’s see. You know, they’re all kind of out of order. I do have an ordering system for them. Okay, let’s see, there’s number six. Number five, this is number four there number eight. So number 7177. Didn’t get used at all.
But eight has a free marks on it. I wonder why that wouldn’t be done. Yes. Hopefully Todd has put seven in here as well.
Can I do double sided when I’m doing these scans? So I don’t know. Okay, so we’ll do if this works, I’ll be very impressed with the scanner. Okay, journal journal. Yeah, turtle. What options do I have? Morning? turtles.
So it’s only me one side at a time. But they’re working. That’s fantastic. Good job. Okay. So that was this side. No, I can do this. If I change the order.
Cool.
Okay, so good. No, do the other side.
And all that future Rob sort out the file names and stuff. But those are scanned back into the trash. Bye You okay? Um, okay, this is a phone story still right? So. So we get to the sotto sotto gaco. That’s the monkey capital, monkey capital, sports, sports in sports in fujiya. And they because they had said that they wouldn’t be happy to accept the phone and all that. So I got there at about one o’clock because I knew between two and four, it would come. So I expected I expected them to come say, Hey, your phone’s here. That didn’t happen. 4:15pm I went down to the office. I was like, Hey, man, did my phone come? And she’s like, Oh, yeah, it Yeah, just a second. I actually maybe at first she was like, Oh, you’re you’re What? And then she’s like, Oh, yeah, maybe my story’s a more melodramatic. But she’s like, yeah, it was right here somewhere. Hang on. Okay, wait, maybe. Wait, I think maybe I put it over here. Oh, oh, here it is, like, underneath some papers. I’m like, dude, that’s my oh my god. You know, come on, you know, geez. You said you would negate you wouldn’t accept it. Please. Help. Anyway. So see, like that’s part of the job like yes, you can deliver something here. Oh, you want me to deliver it to you? I see you. Yes, please. Thank you. Not would be nice. But the short version is yes, I got the phone. I put the 32 gigabyte memory card of the old phone into the new phone. And actually, I started with the big the big card and the 256 gigabyte card put it in and it worked fine. Certainly started the device and all that and then I was like I eyes I don’t remember what my thinking was but I was like, let’s just see. Oh, maybe I know because all the images were not on the card. So I put the 32 gigabyte card into the new phone but it was as if it was starting over again be in I believe that’s because the I believe that’s because the encryption on the card is tied to the hardware of the previous phone they the hardware key or maybe the key within the hardware of the previous phone. So anyway, the new phone could not read the the old 32 gigabyte memory card and so fair enough I mean it’s good security and it’s it’s good to know that if the SD card gets out or stolen or whatever then it can’t be read I don’t know I’m glad to know a bit more about how the cards work but um what what so now that the new phone is using a 256 gigabyte card and it’s working so far are working okay a couple of weeks now a few weeks so yeah, that’s the story of the phone let’s see if another story comes real quick here Yeah, so the one other story while while I Is this correct No. I yeah, I did have the the phone was still working. So this would be like day eight or something or maybe the same day nine that the phone died.
I found a what I believe to be an electrical power plant that hydro Electric plant and I described the water pouring off of us like a small river pouring that cascading into a bigger river as like 10 bathtubs per second worth of water. And I don’t know, what was a more common unit of measure and I guess, cubic meters per second in Japan is it’s usually cubic feet per second in the US, maybe yards per second anyway. I measured it and and estimated it to be 10 bathtubs per second. pouring from the small river into a big river. I took a lot of pictures with with my old phone then I was like, Oh, I have this cool camera. So I went and took photos with the cool camera of this area as well. And so kind of did a little backtracking. But anyway, I took a bunch of photos, I really enjoyed seeing the area and taking lots of photos, even though no one else in the area seemed to care about it anymore. Because they had already seen it. But um, there weren’t a lot of people in the area, but a few so that was that was a cool thing. And I wonder if I can find where that was on the map. I’m sure I can but yeah, anyways, so that’s, that’s enough for this audio thing to new one in a second.
Just to be super clear, I did not have to walk from Sky Terme Shibukawa to Midorinomura camp area.
Lin and I woke up for breakfast at 6:30, packed, then spent the morning driving around trying to get my handset working again.
Amazingly, the shop staff was able to reboot my phone with a llllonnnngggg press (18 seconds) of the power button. I thought I had “done everything” but apparently I hadn’t done that.
The phone kept rebooting, though, and never could get past the opening screen or so.
Looking up online, I found a Stack Exchange issue of something determining that low memory was causing his phone to reboot. I mentioned this to the staff so they offered to sell me a larger Micro SD card:
I had seen much better prices in Shibuya, so Lin drove to the local Yamada Denki where I got a larger Micro SD card:
I put the new card into the old phone but it still just kep rebooting.
Back to the phone shop to tell them the card did not help. They were super confusing. Here are the responses I understood over the hour we were there.
Good grief. Anyway, Lin and I gave up with them after an hour of this, plus calling the CSR line who were only able to “Send a phone to my house” and could not interfere with management of the local shop.
We ate lunch, then went to 金島温泉, which was small, cheap, clean(?), and fine, but got about 2 stars from me and low rating from Lin as well.
We finished around 4pm there which was too late for me to then walk to my place for tonight, so she is joining me in a bungalow at 緑の村キャムプ area.
I am a little bummed because this was to be the day I started walking up mountains, but I am also happy to receive a day off from walking.
Oh, and surprising to me, though my phone is stuck on a screen saying “Just a sec…” it can still receive calls on my phone number. That is a great relief; at least I have connection if people call me. I cannot make calls out, though.
Oh, I was able to print the maps for the next 6 days or so. Tomorrow I plan to start walking using paper maps.
Here was the plan for Day 10
Drive with Lin to AU Shop to hopefully get a new handset
Part 2:
Walk 6 ~ 10(?)km, From Hotel Tatsumi To Kaneshimaonsen Fuki Hot Spring (169km walked so far)
Walk 10km, From Kaneshimaonsen Fuki Hot Spring To Midorinomura Camping Ground (179km walked so far)
Will turn left at Planet Restroom and Restaurant Planet (closed)
The phone can boot
and reboot
and reboot
and reboot
I found an issue with Android halting when low/no memory so I bought a new SD card but still have the same issue. At least I got a good price on the card.
256GB micro SD with adapter: (5,780 yen + tax) 6,358 yen
Back to phone shop to see if they will make good on the warranty.
They were not willing to sort me out with a loaner phone.
At first the reason was they could not contact my local shop via phone.
Then when we were like “well there are many other shops near Tokyo” they said they could not give a loaner phone because I am on a 5G contract and they don’t have a 5G phone.
What an incredible reason is that?? Especially given that half the fuckin' time I look at my phone, it is on 4G because we are in the middle of no 5G towers.
Just called CSR and they will send a new same model of phone to my hotel location. Nice!
My phone conked out while I was walking over Bando Bridge over Tone River
Of all the things I did not expect to put a pause in my walk: phone not working is pretty high on the list.
I had literally just used it to record a video in the middle of Bando Bridge and then when I tried to check the map at the other side of the bridge, my phone didn’t come on.
As per our plan, Lin and I met at Sky Terme Shibukawa.
I had hoped that would be the big news!! Lin and I met!
NOT per plan, I rode with her to the hotel for tonight.
So I walked roughly from Yokohama to Sky Terme Shibukawa
147 kilometers according to Google Maps
https://goo.gl/maps/rhT5bKDVJppyvch99
Hopefully we can get a new handset tomorrow; if not I will go try to print maps of next and next and next destinations.
Wall-o-text language NSFW audio transcript:
So my phone died during the walk, it was surprising to say the least. I know exactly where it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I can guess. But I haven’t. I don’t know for sure.
Walking across. Gosh, okay, so I was walking across Bando Bashi over Tone River, I took a video of me walking across the river. And the video ended up on Google Photos. And yet, by the time I walked to the end of the bridge, and turn the phone back on to check where I needed to turn ,the phone didn’t come back on.
And I was like, Ah, that’s weird. Because it had just been working fine. Taking the video. I tried to charge it didn’t help. And so basically, I was without a phone for the rest of that day. And I was like, Huh, because I was planning to meet my wife that day, I did not have a map of where I was going without the phone. Without the phone, I didn’t have a map. And without the phone, I couldn’t call Lin. Fortunately, I do have her phone number memorized. And fortunately, I did know the name of where I wanted to go. Or maybe just the description was enough. It was an shibukawa. So I walked down the slope past the bridge. And it’s like, a very, not industrial area, but like a business area, but very few people were there. As in none the requirement anyway, but I looking around, I happen to see a woman just happened to come out of her front door. And I was like, Hello, I am trying to go to the to the shibukawa. Sky term. That’s a mispronunciation in Japanese, by the way to talk to me, I think that’s like, taught taught me is the Japanese version. And she’s like, Oh, yeah, just go down the street, go to the second light, which is pretty far and then turn right. And it go even further. And you’ll be there. And I was like, cool. And went to your it matched what was in my brain of how to go like, keep going for a bit and then turn right. So that was good news. And so I just I trusted her guidance and walk to the second light turned right. Walked for a little way saw convenience store, talk to the next guy as I Hey, where’s this thing? And he’s like, keep on going down the street. And it’ll be on your right and I was like, cool. So I got there easily enough. It was all fine. And that also that had been my one of my fallback plans was to know where I needed to go each night and just ask people along the way, Hey, where’s this thing? And they would give me finer and finer detail as I got closer and closer. So anyway, I got to the thing called Lin on their phone, explained the situation. Hey, can I borrow your phone? And uh, yeah, very, very friendly. So I’m glad about that. And called Lin. She was late due to traffic. She’s driving out to meet me. This was like date 10 I think day 10 No, it was day nine. And therefore the 16th of April and nine plus on the 14th of April. Sorry. Interesting. So
basically add 15 days during April, add fifth to subtract 15 days from the date in April to get my walk number so, April 16 was day number one of my walk. Today number nine of my walk was now I’m confused. Nine plus 15. When I say so 24. April 24. Why am I so confused anyway, fuck it. This has been recorded so I can figure out what just happened. So I believe it was April 24. It was day nine of my walk because I remember day 10 got wasted and I’ll tell you why soon. Matlin. It was interesting. After I changed into my outdoor clothes, I was not allowed to sit on certain chairs in the waiting area, and it wasn’t like fancy chairs but like these chairs are okay, but those chairs are only for people who are wearing the right clothes. Dude, okay, whatever. didn’t even try to find it. I was like, okay, fuck off whatever. I don’t care. But fair enough on the woman for like, coming up to me did let me know. But it’s a weird rule. Anyway, cuz they can’t distinguish who paid I guess unless I have the right clothes on. Anyway. I so Linden Lin came is like Wow, good to see you again. You know, and you know, connected and shared and a lot of dots. And then we decided to leave. She didn’t want to do she didn’t want to take more time to do the onsen. That night. That’s the hot spring. So because it was too late for her to get there. And so we drove she drove me the what would have been a 45 minute walk to the hotel, where I had booked a single room and they were like, to me, they said there’s no double rooms available. Sorry, get out of here. But when Lin called she was able to negotiate that we stayed in double room. I don’t think an extra price I’m not sure. But that was great. That was I think the hotel taught to me, I think video is the place right after the five story hotspring which is kind of cool because like each the women’s side and the men’s side were on opposite sides of this like spaceship looking thing on top of a four storey tower and could just be like looking out onto the world over the rice fields with your with your dangling hanging. And so it’s an interesting kind of experience to be up there. And relatively cheap for the price it’d be it’d be cool to go with the men’s group or something. So I went to the hotel, completely exhausted just like sleep. And next day went to it’s funny to hear Lin tell the story of the next night which I’ll try to tell here. The hotel wasn’t I mean, it wasn’t anything to really to write home about his late they had food they had an onsen or a hot spring. Once a cold Yeah, like a public bath thing, but only One group at a time could use it. It wasn’t like, per gender. But that was good. So we, we booked our time and we went in there and didn’t do anything. Besides just take a shower, and I just went back to sleep. But I can’t think of anything else. I can’t even think of anything else that they’re worth talking about. The next day, Len drove me to the phone shop, to try to get my phone replaced, because I had a warranty
insurance on it. And they were like, nope, because I was traveling. And they couldn’t figure out how to prove that I would get the phone back to them if they gave me a loaner phone. And I was like, I’m not coming back to your shop here is too far away from my house. And they couldn’t get in touch with it was really a frustrating situation. Let me be very direct about that. It was super frustrating because their story kept changing. They were like, Oh, yeah, we can do it. And then Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And then oh, maybe we can do it right now and get you the new phone then? Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And like back and forth kind of thing. And I’m not sure why that was happening. And the poor girl, they’re like going back and forth between us and heard the back office of their little shop. But what if what, God? It’s unbelievable to me what the final answer that they gave, like, basically, they couldn’t. I can barely even tell the story without getting angry about is it makes no sense to me. They couldn’t get in touch with the phone shop. near my, near our house near our station, there’s an au shop. They tried to call the shop. But apparently, they’re busy or whatever, and wouldn’t answer the phone or have the wrong phone. I mean, who knows. But because they couldn’t get in touch with the shop, to confirm that I could take the phone, the loaner phone back to that shop. They said they can’t do it. Which is semi sorta like, Okay. However, there are hundreds of au shops in the Tokyo area, any of which I’d be happy to bring the phone back to. Then they said, Oh, we can’t give you a loaner phone because your plan is a five g plan. And we only have four g phones. And I was like, dude, if that is the actual reason, why did you spend an hour going back and forth? Trying to figure out? I mean, it’s like it’s completely nonsensical, because Anyway, my phone was being used as a 4g phone through the backwaters of deriving their area through these, like not very large city areas that don’t have 5g towers. Good on them. Fair enough. Who cares? Just give me a phone. Right? So they know that from the very outset, what’s your name? What’s your phone number, therefore, they have my account information. They know it’s a 5g account, if that’s what they care about. Oh guy was so frustrating. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? spent an hour with this bullshit. God, it was a nightmare. And I mean, of the First World variety, but it’s like, dude, just God, you know? Cuz it was because of that kind of crap that I didn’t walk that day. And so there actually was some upside to that like Lynette to spend time with Lin and who drove around and all that was great. But, Dude, come on, you know, just it was super frustrating. And I don’t even know if it’s really going to come across in the vert in the text version of this as I, as I’m reading this by voice right now, but it was very fucking frustrating. So let me go on the good side of things. At one point. I, gosh, okay, so I couldn’t get the phone to turn on at all, like I would pull the power button
for five seconds and it wouldn’t turn on even if I had it plugged into a battery. And I believe I had it plugged into a battery that for enough of the previous time that it should have been charged, but the, the girl at the shop, held the button for like a full 20 seconds. And that caused the phone to wake up. So whereas I was like, hold it down for five seconds, she’s like, none, I know, you got all that down. And so anyway, we were able to get it to power up. But the operating system wouldn’t fully boot and load and we’re just like, paying or reboot or whatever. And we couldn’t get like the first screen. Although at first it looked like it was it was okay. Like, oh, hey, it’s working. Yay. But then it would power cycle it would reboot itself shortly thereafter. So I don’t know what was happening with the phone, but I did use Line’s phone and I looked up online. And someone was saying Oh, his phone kept rebooting because he didn’t have enough storage on his device. Which is like, kind of a bad architecture. Like why wouldn’t they keep enough space but you know, anyway, the I Well, I was just I had been taking long videos, maybe the the, the SD card is was too full. And that’s what caused it to crash. So the shop they’re like, Oh yeah, we have SD cards here you go in there only like five times the the normal price of SD cards as I know, I see what you’re doing there. As I was about to go down the street isn’t we’re not that far in the boonies. We went and got another SD card that was hella bigger, like twice the size for half the price. And so I guess their their markup was four times the price anyway. They were selling up to 128 gigabytes for like, oh, seven teen 1000 yen, maybe I didn’t, I don’t have the numbers memorized. But we went to base we got it twice a size 256 gigabytes for like 5000 yen, I think. Anyway, it was a lot cheaper. And I put the new card into the old phone but still had the same problem. As I alright. That’s not the card. So that’s when we went back to the first time she just she basically press the power button real hard turned it on. I said, Oh, it’s kind of working. Maybe it’s the SD card. We went and got a new card came back because it wasn’t as at first is like, Oh, I guess it’ll be fine. But then crashed again very shortly. So we went back to the shop and that’s when we spent an hour back and forth back and forth. They’re like maybe we can do it. Maybe we can’t and then oh sorry at the end surprise. You have a 5g phone or a 5g contract. And we only have 4g phones. I was like yeah, that was so annoying. Anyway, anyway, anyway. linen I then we’re like okay, screw you guys. We went to lunch, then went she drove me to the the Hot Spring was called think money something money hot spring money Island i think is the translation con a Shima onsen, I believe. And then by that point it was 4pm by the time we finished with all of that, and not realistically enough time for me to walk to the the green village camp area,
Midori no Muna camp Joe. But because we drove there, we heard a song on the road, which was kind of surreal, lovely surprise, because it was singing When you wish upon a star. And I was like, I heard it. I was like, hang on. That’s music. And then Line was like, What’s that noise? After I had already parsed it, it was music and I had a pretty good idea of what song it was, is like, validating my theory that it was When you wish upon a star. And then Lin’s like, What’s that noise? Like? Dude ain’t been listening to it for a while. But not to not to send me he’s, she’s driving, and whatever. But we got to toilet was it called planet toilet and planet restroom. So it’s planet or sorry, planet restroom and planet restaurant. And I was like, I knew the planet restaurant was closed. And I knew the planet rest room was open. So I was like, dude, I got to go to Planet restroom. You know, this amazing place called planet restroom. And it was just a restroom. And so that was a that was yet another example of something that’s like, you know, cool looking on the map in the name, but like, Yeah, not that cool in reality. But what was interesting slash cool in reality was Oh, and part of the reason that we waited a whole hour for them to go through their checklist. They wanted the phone to get charged up to at least 50%. So they knew it wasn’t the battery that was causing the problem. And so we’re like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for that which would ended up not helping, obviously. So anyway, we’ve wasted a lot of time, but that that shop when I’m not very impressed with that. Anyway, screw it, we, we went to Planet restroom, and it was like, and then went down to the green green camp area. We were the only people there as far as I could tell. And we rented out one of the bungalows. And then Lin’s version of the story is that she wanted to go get some food. And I was like, No, too tired. And just wanting to eat the nuts that she brought. And so I didn’t even really think about that would even though being her husband, I should have known that she would like to go somewhere for food, but I was just like, not too tired. Couldn’t even like think about walking to the truck to drive to wherever. I just wanted to sleep, sleep sleep. And that’s what we did. So it was the bungalow was was fine. It was not too cold as she feared it might be and so she in her version of story, she’s like, okay, you just eat a few little nuts or anything. And to me it’s completely ample and fine. Like no need whatsoever to have more had she known her husband better what she could have done was not give me the nuts first of all because she she’s like, hey, here I am. Here’s all the stuff you wanted and gave me all these nuts and stuff. are maybe I didn’t even order it but she just gave them to me and I was like cool. Done. You know, that’s dinner for tonight. And so she, she knows me well enough that I think she could have made that guess and give that to me in the morning. But she doesn’t have the same patience I do to, like, let her for something and make it allow it to happen in its time. But she prepared and she like hey, go here’s your here’s your your dinner for tonight is what I was hearing and she she wanted for a snack for later anyway. Anyway, anyway, whatever. Um, so that’s the story about the phone. No, not even done yet. So then interestingly,
while the I had this dead phone, and we were driving to the green camp site, I got a call on the phone, and it’s the green camp green campsite, they’re like, we have you down for reservation, where are you? So we’re almost there. But it was cool. That might. So the SIM card on the phone was working fine. And the hardware was working fine. But so I could receive calls. But with the software, the O s, I couldn’t make calls couldn’t even log into the the OS itself. Not log in, but could you like boot the OS. But um, I could receive calls, that was a blessing. So for the next day and a half. I was able to use that phone to receive calls and certainly came in handy to have that as an option. Line called me a couple times, and Jason called me a couple of times during that time,
then, okay, so then that night, in the more annoying phone saga kind of thing. The call the, the, like the head office, so to speak up the phone guys and say, hey, my, here’s my name. here’s, here’s my phone number. Here’s my name. Here’s my secret code. And my phone is broken. And yes, I have insurance. And yes, I like using a new phone. But I’m not at home. I’m out and about and it won’t be back for a long time. And so can you send it to a hotel and you’re like, ma’am, and all of this is taking like double the time to communicate. Because it’s going from me in English to an English translator to a jet to Japanese guy in the backseat translator and back to me. And because Lin’s not allowed to call on my behalf for my phone, but from my account, but finally they’re like okay, well we’ll send it to the hotel. What’s the address? And so then I get the phone to Lin so she could read the address off in Japanese. You know, Sarugako Onsen, blah blah blah and
then they’re like “okay, Have you contacted the hotel to make sure it’s okay to receive something?”
“Um, no, we just decided, and you were here during the conversation, you know..”
So he’s all “okay please call them first.”
“All right bye” call the hotel and they are like “sure!” then call the phone guys back and it’s the the office and there’s like 1010 different people there answering phones.
Hello, What’s your phone number? What’s your name? What’s your secret number? What happened? phone died. Okay. But um, my new phone Okay, you have insurance, but I’m traveling. So okay, what should we do about it? All right, send it to this address. And yes, we contacted them so you can send it Okay, what time do you want to send it? And so, these we said between 2pm and 4pm. And in order to arrive on this day, so we confirm the day confirm the location, confirm the address confirm the time and when you fit into the system, the system works well in Japan. So great. I assume is going to be there. I did not Send it to the place for the next day, which I could have and think about it probably should have, but didn’t because the next day was a long walking day. And the day that I sent it was going to be a short walking day. So I would have time to phone and get the phone set up that afternoon. Anyway, um, the next day, I spent walking using paper maps, and during the whole driving around town on the on day 10 to figure out what’s up and get the new phone, I also was in parallel, just in case we cannot get a phone I downloaded I took screenshots of the maps that I had prepared and organized the screenshots with the day numbers and printed the O so we had to go by a what’s it called, and SD, USB, USB storage device and buy it buy the device, we we went to a place that said they could print it from a file, but it would be like beautiful image quality like photograph quality pictures with 400 yen each. And I was like Ah, no, not gonna do that
i i doubt I can sell these and make that worth the price even though they would be nice quality paper. And they’re going to get all tore up anyway because I want to write on them as I’m walking. So we bought and I bought a USB storage, USB key for storage. And took that to convenience store. Which only printed JPEGs oh god so back to my computer. And that’s what we at that point we went to lunch back to my computer, converted the PNGs into JPEGs back onto the USB key back to the convenience store. plugged it in and printed like 24 odd sheets, which was that was fine in great and easy once again once I got into the system, it worked fine. It just it was annoying to get into that system but printed six days worth of pages. And then that night is when we contacted the the guys twice to have them send the send the phone to the next location anyway, the next day I use maps to walk to the next hotel and do what i the only thing I needed was to get started on the right road. So we like drove to know I walked Yeah, I walked from the bungalow to the front, the office which there was no one there we just dropped the key off at that thing. So I’m not able to ask anyone but looked at lens GPS looked at what I could see physically around me looked at my paper as I Alright, I Okay, I see which street I need to take. So I started taking that street wave goodbye to Lin and lots of lots of kisses and hugs and walk walk walk wave goodbye. And it was very easy to use the paper maps. Very grateful for her support to get me sorted out with paper maps I would have been quite annoying to do a lot of walking. Had I had to do it. probably would have been a lot more expensive as well, because I would be like nah. Not willing, for example, to walk to the place where they had microSD cards at a good price, etc. But
so yeah, I, I using the map I was, there was a first time I was counting my steps. And I got a relatively good system, just count my left foot steps. And would mark mark each segment of the map where I needed to, like, walk to this corner turn here, as I marked out all the different bits, like this was 40 steps. This was 50 steps. And I hope I still have that page. I’ll go scan it right now if I do, because that’s an interesting little thing. Please don’t be thrown away. Please be here. Okay. Is it here? Wait, yes. Okay. Yeah, they’re still here. Good. So I’ll scan these. And so So yeah, I printed the maps and they were it was very easy to use to walk around. And so now, here I have the area that I walked around and this one here we go. Yeah. Okay, nice. Really glad I kept these. I had them in my trash. They didn’t make the cut yesterday. I had thrown them away, but they didn’t get released. I can just scan them very easily and put them on my website. I hope they scan. Okay, they’re all folded up.
And all that future Rob sort out the file names and stuff. But those are scanned back into the trash. Bye You okay? Um, okay, this is a phone story still right? So. So we get to the sotto sotto gaco. That’s the monkey capital, monkey capital, sports, sports in sports in fujiya. And they because they had said that they wouldn’t be happy to accept the phone and all that. So I got there at about one o’clock because I knew between two and four, it would come. So I expected I expected them to come say, Hey, your phone’s here. That didn’t happen. 4:15pm I went down to the office. I was like, Hey, man, did my phone come? And she’s like, Oh, yeah, it Yeah, just a second. I actually maybe at first she was like, Oh, you’re you’re What? And then she’s like, Oh, yeah, maybe my story’s a more melodramatic. But she’s like, yeah, it was right here somewhere. Hang on. Okay, wait, maybe. Wait, I think maybe I put it over here. Oh, oh, here it is, like, underneath some papers. I’m like, dude, that’s my oh my god. You know, come on, you know, geez. You said you would negate you wouldn’t accept it. Please. Help. Anyway. So see, like that’s part of the job like yes, you can deliver something here. Oh, you want me to deliver it to you? I see you. Yes, please. Thank you. Not would be nice. But the short version is yes, I got the phone. I put the 32 gigabyte memory card of the old phone into the new phone. And actually, I started with the big the big card and the 256 gigabyte card put it in and it worked fine. Certainly started the device and all that and then I was like I eyes I don’t remember what my thinking was but I was like, let’s just see. Oh, maybe I know because all the images were not on the card. So I put the 32 gigabyte card into the new phone but it was as if it was starting over again be in I believe that’s because the I believe that’s because the encryption on the card is tied to the hardware of the previous phone they the hardware key or maybe the key within the hardware of the previous phone. So anyway, the new phone could not read the the old 32 gigabyte memory card and so fair enough I mean it’s good security and it’s it’s good to know that if the SD card gets out or stolen or whatever then it can’t be read I don’t know I’m glad to know a bit more about how the cards work but um what what so now that the new phone is using a 256 gigabyte card and it’s working so far are working okay a couple of weeks now a few weeks so yeah, that’s the story of the phone let’s see if another story comes real quick here Yeah, so the one other story while while I Is this correct No. I yeah, I did have the the phone was still working. So this would be like day eight or something or maybe the same day nine that the phone died.