justin․searls․co

Lake Hamana Rest Stop

When Americans think of a highway rest stop, if they were feeling generous they imagine a gorgeous park, filled with children playing and couples strolling. Maybe a second-rate Starbucks and ice cream shop. Possibly even a nice view of the water.

But nothing like this. This puts them all to shame.

Kaze no yu HAZU

After visiting Kourankei, we took a brief break back at the hotel and asked ChatGPT for some ideas of other things to do near Shinshiro. Becky suggested we try Yuya Onsen town and then realized we had exactly 7 minutes to make the only train for the next two hours. So we speed-walked to the station and paid our fare on board the train.

The Yuya Onsen station is not manned. Despite being arguably more beautiful that day than the nationally famous Kourankei, its visitors are almost entirely regional residents getting away for an afternoon or a weekend.

We strolled up to this fabulous onsen hotel and asked if they accommodate same-day (日帰り) visitors at their hot springs baths. They politely told me no.

Fortunately, I didn't immediately fold and declare defeat on the outing. Instead, I thought to ask if they offer any other plans that might include bath access and my phrasing apparently reminded the staff of a special kaiseki lunch plus bath deal. So for ¥4500 per person we got to experience all their baths and have an absolutely wonderful seven-course lunch. You love to see it.

Also, on our way out, we met Kohaku—the hotel's pet owl. He was understandably sleepy.

Building with Becky

It has been very fun and very weird to be traveling across Japan using an app that I built doing workouts designed by my spouse, but it's worked a lot better for me than fucking around with Fitbod and other apps ever did.

Kourankei

My friend Junko is from Nagoya, so when I asked for recommendations for where to see the leaves changing color (紅葉) she told me Kourankei in Aichi-ken was tops.

It was too warm too late in the year for the maple trees to hit their peak by our late November visit but it was still a really beautiful place to visit. I just wish I didn't have to leave the hotel at 5:30am to ensure I'd get a parking spot.

GitHub spam has gotten worse?

I can't remember getting spam issues and comments so frequently at any point in GitHub's run, so I'm not sure what's driving it now.

This morning I woke up to 40+ emails generated by a dozen or so issues splayed across a bunch of Standard Ruby's repos and initiated by five or six accounts. Unfortunately, the GitHub web UI doesn't make it easy to quickly report spam, delete issues, and block users in one fell swoop. Separately, I encountered a number of race condition bugs in their React interface that resulted in validation failures, so I wasn't able to block them all from the org. Alas.

Great way to start the day.

Senshu Park

This park in central Akita city is unusual in its scale, upkeep, and beauty. Outside Central Park, I can't think of another park that dominates such a huge percentage of prime real estate in a city and is so well-maintained and relied-upon by locals. If the leaves are changing colors, you gotta go. But even if they're not, you really should check it out if you're ever in Akita.

Apple Maps Stay Winning

I have always been willing to suffer Apple Maps in exchange for its tighter platform integration than its competitors, but at least in America and Japan specifically, it has really leapfrogged Google Maps in recent years. Not only in map accuracy, but also general usability. I only today realized I could plan out multi-stop journeys. This allowed me to plan a drive from rural Kanazawa to my adopted hometown of Hikone, an Anytime Fitness in a suburb of Nagoya, a nearby Babyface Planets for dinner (fantastic Omurice btw), before eventually landing at our hotel in Shinshiro.

I'm not super comfortable driving out here, so being able to plan this out in advance to break up the trip was a huge relief and helped me stay off my phone while driving. That's a pretty big UX win.

(The fact that you can't get navigation directions in Japanese without changing your primary system language makes it less than a clean victory, however.)