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Old Tech

Saturday, July 20th, 2024

I’ve been doing another attic purge, and in the midst of book recycling and comic donating and unwanted toy trashing I found a few boxes of almpst-forgotten old tech. Let’s see some of what was in them!

The above is a small Polaroid camera that used special film to produce tiny stamp-sized photos. The photos we took using this have mostly faded over the years, so this is a classic example of ephemeral technology. The same technology continues today in the Instax cameras, which I’m sure will fill attic boxes in years to come.

The above was our first Polaroid, and produced the full-sized pictures that were known worldwide. We never used it much since the film was so expensive. Over the years the plastic of the flashbulb yellowed, the rubber used for the strap became brittle and broke, and the adhesive on the back of the brand sticker lost its stick.

This was the only portable CD player I ever owned in the US (or ever?) and I don’t recall ever using it except perhaps in a car via the cassette adaptor. It no longer works, probably due to a belt for the motor having perished long ago.

To my great surprise this portable minidisc player worked, and the disc inside contained a recording of a physics lecture I attended about 24 years ago! The detritus on the microphone cable is the remains of an elastic band that had perished over the years. I used to have a minidisc player in my car, and we still have a console-sized minidisc player set up downstairs, although I haven’t powered it on for many years!

This is a relic of a bygone era: a wireless mouse from the days before Bluetooth! That thing on the left is the receiver, which connected to the PC via a serial port. I can barely remember ever using this, although I imagine it was wonderful when I got it.

We used our first (and only) camcorder a lot, although these days it seems impossible large and cumbersome. It also no longer works, having problems reading the tape and with the eject mechanism. Many years ago I encoded all the movies from cassette onto CDs but we haven’t watched any for decades.

Some computer memory and an Ethernet card. These were for old laptops, including…

My first laptop! I loved this and used it mostly for gaming. It seemed fairly small and portable at the time, although by todays standards it’s far too large and heavy to port around. I plugged it in but it doesn’t get past the above screen. I recall the hard-drive failed one day when I was using it and it has basically been a brick ever since.

This was my last laptop, a still-small Sony model. I used this a lot including to code my PhD simulation and have very fond memories of it. Alas it broke in two ways: first the harddrive started failing and then this happened:

I had another laptop as well; a very small VAIO model I took with me when I traveled. I recall it also broke but don’t remember what I did with it. Perhaps it’s still in the attic in another box?

The left was Kristin’s first phone, the middle my first, and the right my first that could message. The Virgin one still feels wonderful to hold, and closes up to be extremely tiny. I remember I had to pay per text sent, and since I didn’t have a contract I had to purchase top-up cards at the store!

There’s also this phone, and to be honest I don’t remember it at all. The Ultraman Tiga sticker on the back is proof it was mine, and my guess would be I used it between the two in the previous photo, in the very early 2000s.

As technology improved so did our phones, and the above were what we (and most other people!) were using before smartphones took over. They’re still beautiful little pieces of tech – especially the ones on the right – and I have fond memories of them.

Incidentally I attempted to power on the phones I had chargers for but none of them would get past the startup screen. Maybe they’re looking for a signal that no longer exists?

We’ve had lots of digital cameras over the years, and the above are what remains. A couple of them are dead and the ones that still work utilize memory cards I can no longer read and even the best one (the lower right) produces images of quality much, much less than our current phones. They were all great in their day, but they’re just curios for non-collectors now.

This one is very small and I remember I loved how easy it was to carry it around with me. We even had a smaller one, but the CCD failed and I’m sure I trashed it years ago.

As Apple users for decades now we have a good collection of obsolete Apple products including the above two tiny iPods. We actually have seven iPods in this house, two of which are still in active use!

All the above – two iPads, two iPhones, an iPod touch, an iPod (that went through the washing machine and emerged unscathed) and a first generation AppleTV – are old enough now they can’t be updated and some can’t even hold a charge. They’re all electronic junk now, and will soon be recycled at our local Apple Store.

With a few exceptions (the minidisc player, iPods and one phone) everything on this page has now been trashed or recycled. This is only a selection of what I found, and the amount of items tossed was heavy enough that I could barely lift it all.

A few of the other items I kept are worth sharing here as well, although special enough they warrant their own dedicated posts. Watch for them!

Posted in Blog, History, Memories, Retro, Tech, Time | 1 Comment »

“This Is The Onsen Town That They Forgot To Close Down”

Thursday, June 6th, 2024

In the 1980s the Japanese economy was the strongest in the world. Most families had lots of money and corporations had more than they could even spend. This triggered a real estate investment boom, which lasted until the ‘bubble burst’ in the 1990s.

Due to local sources of hot spring water, onsen resorts have been built in Kinugawa for over 100 years. In the 1970s and 1980s the town experienced explosive growth and the edge of the scenic river that runs through the town became encrusted with massive hotels built to fuel a boom in tourism and corporate travel. By the late 1990s with the downturn in the economy many of the hotels were in trouble, and by the mid 2000s when local banks went bankrupt about half of the hotels – including the largest ones – were abandoned. This dealt Kinugawa a blow from which it is still trying to recover.

I had no idea of the above until I did some research for this post. I assumed Kinugawa would be quaint and perhaps catered more to the elderly. I didn’t expect ruins and the strange sense of unease over the town.

My hotel room is very old, probably older than me. It lacks most of the basics of a typical Japanese room, but it’s very large, has good AC and a TV with more channels than my Asakusa room had! I booked it for the – admittedly incredible – river view, and even as I write this I’m at one of those chairs looking out the window. This is part of an annex to a much larger hotel, and the rooms in the full hotel are giant Japanese-style suites that cost much more than the approximately $65 I’m paying a night.

When I arrived I quickly checked in and headed out to visit a certain bridge I’d identified about half an hour up the gorge. Very quickly I started noticing how dead everything was. Many buildings were empty or even in advanced disrepair, and a coat of rust seemed to coat everything. A roadside shrine was unkempt and also apparently abandoned, which I’d never seen before. Some old shops had signs in their windows that looked like they’d been there for decades.

The above statue is in a city park with grass almost knee-high that almost certainly hasn’t been mowed this year. You can see how green and lush everything is, but what the photos don’t show is how humid and hot it was. I sweated a lot even though it wasn’t a particularly strenuous walk.

Eventually I reached my destination: a great suspended bridge spanning the gorge that contains the Kinugawa (it means ‘angry demon’) river. You can see how rusted the bridge is in the photo, and many of the wooden boards had seen better days as well. It bounced as I crossed, but the views were extraordinary!

That’s looking north. That giant hotel? Abandoned for over two decades now.

And that’s looking south. All the hotels on the east side of the river (left of the photo)? All abandoned as well. Far below the river surged powerfully. Even amidst the disrepair the views were breathtaking.

The road goes right past the entrances to these eerie structures, and the above is a photo of the main entrance to one of them. The ruined signs list the name of the hotel and a restaurant. How long since any customers checked in here?

Most of these buildings are very poorly secured, and I could have easily walked right in. Some brave souls do, and Kinugawa is apparently considered one of the best places on earth to explore ruined structures. The internet is full of creepy photos of the interiors of these places. Some weren’t even stripped of contents when abandoned, and have furniture and equipment like computers or even video games!

One ruined hotel had kappa paintings on the fascade, which made it even creepier. I read online that this particular hotel has a flooded lower level due to the hot spring it is built over. The local government is concerned about some of these buildings falling into the river, but they don’t have the money to demolish them.

It’s not just the hotels. Obviously with the main businesses gone the support economy was also gutted and the road is full of failed businesses and empty homes. Rust and weeds are everywhere. It’s likely being on a completely different planet compared to Tokyo! I read Kinugawa has been nominated as one of the ugliest places in Japan, but to be honest I’m finding it so surreal it has an appeal of its own.

It’s worth mentioning I barely saw a single other human in my walk, and very little traffic. There are weird statues all over town as well. The above was erected in 1975. Every now and then I saw a home that appeared newly built, which stood out amidst the decay.

I came to a foot bath, which is a mini hot spring you can sit at to bath your feet. The water was almost painfully hot and reddened my feet quickly. There was an elderly couple sitting behind me. Were they tourists like myself? Most of the locals I had seen were much older than me.

I had looped around and was nearly back to the hotel, which itself is very close to the station. For all the ruin there’s still life here, and indeed the remaining hotels are working hard to preserve the resort aspect. Most of them are large and have big tour busses parked outside, and as I checked into mine a group of two dozen or so elderly Japanese were checking in. Mine also has ‘fancy’ restaurants that serve only traditional Japanese food, which meant I had to stop at a remarkably well-stocked 7-11 for a dinner more to my taste:

It was finally time for the hot spring, which of course is the principle reason I’m here in the first place! I didn’t really know what to do and the staff speak virtually no English so I was happy to find a guide on a tablet at checkin:

It’s very incomplete, and I had to look up the basics of how to put on a yukata and the protocol of using the spring. Nudity is of course required, but I didn’t wear my glasses so the modesty of the other men (there were about a half dozen others) was preserved!

My hotel has six springs, and they cycle them periodically between the genders, so each have three available at a time. Of course you can’t bring a camera in, so the above photo of the outdoor spring I spent most of my time in is taken from their website. The water is hotter than I’d run my bath but not too hot, and the experience was exquisite. The springs are large and could easily accommodate dozens of people. The outdoor one has a few nooks and crannies for privacy although strangely none of the other men came outside so I had it to myself.

I put my head back and listened to the river and some birds and was in heaven. I had a good soak until I started feeling faint 🙂

For many guests I imagine a stay here means soaking in the onsen and eating fine food without leaving the hotel, and I say that’s perfectly fine. I’ve got a few other things I’d like to see in the area (tomorrows post should be a good one…), but I’ll absolutely be taking advantage of these hot springs more than once a day!

Lastly, of course I have to include the above photos that show the long arm of the otaku anime industry even extends to this forgotten town. On the left is ‘Kinugawa Onsen’ train girl that greets you at the station, and on the right is this very hotel’s ‘Onsen Girl’. They even sell souvenirs of her! Even here you can’t avoid anime girls 🙂

Posted in Time, Trip | Comments Closed

My Collection: DS

Tuesday, May 7th, 2024

The Nintendo DS was a two-screen, touchscreen, foldable handheld game console released by Nintendo almost 20 years ago. It would go on to be phenomenally popular, and at 154 million units sold remains the best-selling Nintendo product ever.

I bought two DS units on release day (11/21/04): one for me and one for KLS. In time I would own seven in total, six of which I still have. The above photo shows four of them: an original model (silver), a DS Lite (white, 2006), a DSi (black, 2008) and a DSi XL (maroon, 2009). All are in immaculate condition and still work perfectly.

The system is a little quaint to use today, since most of it’s features are vastly surpassed by our phones, but at launch it was amazing to have a touchscreen game system and many of the launch games exploited this. Only the bottom of the two screens was the touch screen, and the common mode was for games to use it for touch control while displaying action at the top (like Dark Spire, shown above). Unfortunately developers were mostly not up to the task of incorporating touch elements into games twenty years ago, and during the first year of the DS it was home to many poor games that tried to sell themselves solely on gimmick. Then Nintendo released two very clever ‘games’ – Nintendogs and Brain Age – that both became phenomenons, sales of the DS exploded, and it never looked back.

In addition to a touchscreen and the dual screens of the system the DS was the first handheld with communication features. Consoles could talk to each other via WiFi which enabled wire-free multiplayer games, and about two years after release an internet browser was released. The comparitively low resolution of the screen limited functionality, but this was before I had a cellphone that could access the internet so it was novel for the time. Sadly it seems defunct now: I tried it yesterday and the Opera-based browser failed to load everything I tried except for Google, and even then search results wouldn’t load.

I bought and still own more games for the DS than for any other system: 271 in total as of writing this. My first game (Super Mario DS) was purchased on release day, and my most recent (Fairy Tail Gekitosu) was bought about a year ago. During it’s era this was by far my most favourite console ever, and looking through my games as I did yesterday was an experienced drenched in nostalgia.

These three photos (the two above and one below) show most of my collection, which currently fills two large storage boxes.

The majority of the collection was purchased from 2006 to 2009, and for three of those years I averaged more than one DS game per week! The DS was officially retired (in favour of the 3DS) in 2011, but the 3DS was reverse compatible so I still purchased games for the original DS for a few more years until 2013 or so, when releases had mostly ended.

Notably, the DS was not region locked, and I purchased many Japanese games for it (most are shown above) during our travels. Indeed, I even have a (pink) DSi that i bought in Japan a few months before it was released in the USA 🙂

The above are most of my ‘collectors editions’ of DS games, which in those days almost always meant they came in a slightly larger box with a soundtrack CD or mini-artbook. Two of the above – Dark Spire and Super Robot Taisen – are amongst my favourite games for the system.

With such a large personal collection, it’s not surprising I have a few of the rarer games. The above is the rarest and most valuable I still own. Purchased in 2009 for a mere $20, this game (think of Animal Crossing meets Harry Potter) was released in small quantities sells for upwards of $200 these days. I don’t remember it being any good.

The above show a few other games in my collection that currently sell for $100+, and I have many more as well (most of the Pokemon games included). Generally speaking much of my collection is worth at least what I paid for it, and most of it is worth more, albeit not to the level some of my older collections sold for these past six years.

That said I did used to own the two rarest and most expensive DS games – Solatorobo and Shepherd’s Crossing – but I sold the pair together a few years ago for an impressive sum 🙂

Moving away from pricey and collectible games into the most treasured of my collection, the above shows the three Oeundan games: the two Japanese originals and the US installment named Elite Beat Agents. These are incredibly fun and playable rhythm-based music games that I became absolutely obsessed with for a year or so. I remember being competitive with Florence about these games as well, and I’ll choose to remember that she never beat my highest scores 🙂

The above are three DS Castlevania installments, and each are wonderfully playable exploration-based games that remain classics to this day. Ask me which is best and I’ll give you a different answer every time, and indeed I’m sure I’ll be replaying the trilogy again many times (as I recently did during the pandemic).

The Yggdrasil Labyrinth (aka. Etrian Odyssey) game series debuted on the DS as well, and I love them all. These Wizardry-like RPGs kickstarted a renaissance in dungeon crawlers that continues to this day, and a remake of these three came out for Switch earlier this year (which I own and have been playing).

The Puzzle Quest series also debuted on the DS. This is a clever match-3 RPG hybrid that spawned many sequels and clones (including a Magic The Gathering version on iOS) over the next decade or so. The first three remain the best, and are as much fun today as they were when they first came out.

If you look closely at the photos of my collection you’ll see many other great games, including the various Pokemon installments, Dragon Quest games, the Advance Wars series and some of the earlier Mario RPGs. During the heyday of the DS it felt like a great game was coming out every week, and as soon as I finished one I’d be immediately starting the next.

But apparently I didn’t play everything, since the above pic shows four sealed games I own! I would eventually buy and play Rune Factory 3 on Switch many years later, but the others I’ve never played. Will I ever? Perhaps 🙂

Before I wrap this up, a mention of the camera. The DSi model released a few years after the original included a camera, and it was a little sad yesterday to find photos of beloved Yossie that I had long forgotten I had taken. Yossie was with us during the DS era, and many, many hours were spent playing with her in my lap. Indeed she had a special ‘interest’ in the DS, or more particularly the charging cables:

Remember I said we own six DS units? What we don’t own is six charging cables! In fact we’re down to a mere three – one of which has been repaired as you can see above. Why so few? The answer is Yossie, who loved chewing through them. She did it many times and ruined half of them. I loved her dearly, so never held it against her, but those days taught us the importance of always making sure cables were away from the sight of kitties 🙂

As I mentioned above the DS was eventually replaced by the 3DS, which was an incredible handheld console. But that’s a story for another day…

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Time | Comments Closed

McDonald’s Memories

Sunday, January 28th, 2024

That’s the first Australian McDonald’s, which opened in Sydney the year before I was born. From what I can determine, the first McDonald’s in Newcastle opened when I was 7, and since it wasn’t far from where my Nan lived it was a frequent treat after we’d visit her house.

Since then I’ve eaten at Maccas hundreds of times, and over those 40+ years many memories have been made. Here’s a selection:

  • As a child the McDonald’s calendar was an essential purchase! Not only did we hang it on our walls, we also coloured it in and – most importantly – we used the coupons every month to get free food!
  • Happy Meals were my default order as a child, and the toys (in my memory) were much higher quality than today. I fondly remember some Star Wars stencils that could be used to draw characters, that I wish I’d kept to this day.
  • Ice creams in those days were self-serve!

  • Graduating to Big Macs was one moment in my life when I felt like an adult. I don’t remember who it was, but I was at Maccas with a friend once and he got a Big Mac and I ordered a ‘Junior Burger’ and he asked me why I didn’t eat Big Macs! This prompted me to try one and I never looked back 🙂
  • Back when we had our paper run one time the newspaper came with Maccas coupons for free fries. We ended up with loads of them and I recall I had a lot of fries during the weeks that followed!
  • During the 1984 Olympics I remember my group of friends used to go to Charlestown Maccas after school and watch the athletic events. A girl in my year was working there at the time and she used to surreptitiously give us free food.

  • I used to love the cookies! Australia didn’t have a strong traditional of ‘animal crackers’ so we didn’t know that Maccas cookies were basically the same. Even well into my teens I used to get a box of these with my order and eat them on the bus home.
  • I also used to enjoy their strawberry milkshakes, although I haven’t had one since I left Australia.
  • In my last year of High School we organized a treasure hunt and one item on the list was ‘one point for every McDonald’s cheeseburger you bring us’ and we had loads delivered (as well as a phone call of complaint from a McDonald’s!). This was when microwaves were uncommon so we (me and the judges) ate a bunch for dinner and – to my shame – had to throw the rest away.

  • The frozen cokes I’ve ordered at Australian McDonald’s. During my summer trips it wasn’t unusual for me to have two or three a day, but these past years – since I’ve traveled in winter – it’s usually been just one. It’s the best item on their menu 🙂
  • When I first returned to Oz in 2000 I wrote a series of postcards on alternate days in the George street Maccas. Entitled ‘The McDonalds Series’, these are some of the oldest and most nostalgic postcards in my collection.

  • During our trip to Germany we visited many McDonald’s, often not eating at all. The reason: I was hunting McDonald’s glasses with ‘coca cola’ written in various different languages!
  • At a Maccas in Paris – on the Champs-Elysees to be specific – I ate breakfast very early and was the only diner in the restaurant. A man came and sat down right next to me and bowed his head until it hit the table. I quickly finished and left, and later that day my hotel concierge told me he was probably a homeless man looking to scavenge any food I may have left on the tray.

  • I could do a blog post on Japanese Maccas memories alone, but two that stick out were the Superfries (read about them here) and not once but twice being seated at a very busy Maccas and finding myself sharing a table with a young ‘office lady’ working on her laptop!
  • The memory I’m most proud of would be my 2022 achievement of seven identical orders in seven days at seven different Maccas (read about it here). Will I ever surpass this? No man yet knows…

So many years of McDonald’s! The irony is I almost never eat it in the USA since it’s usually awful here, but you can bet that any foreign trip I ever go on will include at least one stop at a Maccas. Let’s hope there’s many more memories to be made 🙂

Posted in Food, Memories, Miscellaneous, Time | 1 Comment »

Top 40 Nostalgia

Saturday, October 7th, 2023

Some years back I referred to my collection of ‘Too 40’ charts I used to get at the record shops. I had dozens of them lasting many years through the 1980s, and wish I still had them.

Recently I found some scanned in a historical website of Australian music. The scans were a little low-resolution, but the charts are still readable. Here’s one from March 1984:

Some iconic songs in that top 10! Also note that Thriller is at week 67 in the top 40 but a Midnight Oil album is at week 69! Incidentally I love how this scan is obviously of a copy once owned by a kid who wrote on it.

Here’s the back of the same chart:

These were about A4 size, always printed in two different colours, and usually sat in piles on a counter free for the taking. The fronts always showed the singles/album chart and the back was usually an ad that often contained lyrics. It was a particularly great week when a band I liked was featured on the back 🙂

Here’s the front and back of another from 1984:

99 Luftballoons spent at least two weeks at number 1 in Australia? I wouldn’t have remembered that, even though I did buy the single (and I believe own it to this day). Since I was a big fan of Nik Kershaw in those days, I’m sure I was thrilled to see him featured on the back.

Here’s one from 1985, in which we see the Countdown (a very famous Oz music TV show) promotion had ended:

And lastly the fronts only of two more:

That’s all I was able to find online, and since it was years ago I no longer remember where. If anything this dip into nostalgia makes me want to get my hands on one even more. Years back I saw one (in so-so condition) for sale in an antique store for some silly price and passed. Next time I may reach for my wallet, especially if it’s got a good band on the back 🙂

Posted in Australia, History, Music, Retro, Time | 2 Comments »

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