Tabelogged: うらしま
Tabelogged: コージー ビーチ クラブ
Tabelogged: ポーたま 牧志市場店
Tabelogged: ズートンズ 久茂地店
Tabelogged: 糸ぐるま
RubyKaigi 2025 is heading to Matsuyama
Incidentally, Becky and I just visited Matsuyama for the first time a bit over a week ago, so I was surprised (and delighted!) when RubyKaigi's head organizer Akira Matsuda announced that next year's event will be held in Matsuyama from April 16-18, 2025.
If you've never been, Matsuyama resides in Ehime prefecture, which is on the island of Shikoku, just southwest of Japan's main island. It has one of the most cherished castles in the country atop a mountain at the center of the city and which is accessible by a continuously running cable car. It's also home to Dōgo onsen, which is considered to be the oldest hot springs bath in the country (and one of several inspirations for Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away). Additionally, it's famous for its massive and varied mikan (Japanese clementine oranges) crop—Becky and I got to sample a smattering of varieties from a store that had dozens of local citrus juices on tap, via cute little faucets.
Getting to Matsuyama isn't so bad either. From Osaka, it's about 3.5 hours by train, and a special rapid "Shiokaze" train service runs to Matsuyama from Okayama, making it an easy transfer from the Sanyo Shinkansen.
If you've ever wanted to visit a hot springs resort, or get a glimpse of daily life in a more remote Japanese city than the most well-known tourist destinations, I hope I'll see you next year!
[Translator's note: yama means mountain]

I'm going to take a stab at recording a podcast from Japan now that RubyKaigi has finished. If you have any curiosities about what's coming up in Ruby 3.4 or questions about the conference, email them! podcast@searls.co

My biggest takeaway from this has nothing to do with the content of the alleged group chat, it's that even billions of dollars won't buy you a better user experience than the junky interface of WhatsApp. Shame. theverge.com/2024/5/16/24158393/billionaires-urged-nyc-mayor-to-sic-police-on-columbia-encampment

PSA: if you're using Rails+Hotwire, Turbo's so-fast-it-feels-like-magic ability to update sections of the DOM downgrades Capybara's all
method from "likely to regret this" to "definite footgun" when used in system tests.
IME, Turbo Streams updates the DOM so fast that elements found with Capybara's all
are extremely likely to be stale by the time you iterate and interact with them. After several days of fighting intermittent CI failures, I had to banish all
in favor of find
in all my tests.
Tabelogged: SKY BAR AUGUST MOON
Oops! All Dryers
Had a surprisingly hard time finding a coin laundry in Okinawa this morning. First one I went to only had dryers, which was a first. 💨
Kawakyu Tonkatsu
We had a brief stop in Kagoshima, so we took full advantage to get ourselves some Kurobuta (黒豚) pork. The pork is like "black angus" in that despite having "black" in the name, it is still the just-barely-cooked-enough-to-be-safe pink color we know and love.
