New Printer

Well, not long before moving out we found that the Canon Printer that I had owned for a couple of years had failed. It was giving a series of beeps and then flashes whenever you powered it up, and would also fail to print. This kind of sucked to say the least. I was never overly impressed with the printer, the print quality was fine, but to print borderless photos was a massive hassle. Plus the ink was used up very quickly, and if you didn't use it for extended periods (which was the case for me) the ink would dry out.

Well during one of these periods of inactivity the printer head failed. I was pretty pissed off as I really had not used the printer that much, and certainly not in any kind of high volume way at all. I have been a pretty loyal canon user for many years now (my first printer was a canon inkjet printer, and it saw me through high school and university). But was very disappointed to find this thing had failed. I found that I could order a third party printer head from the web from a place in England... but it would cost about 80 pounds... way more than I would bother to pay. Considering a new printer would hardly cost more than that.

Kiyomi me and I saddled up and headed up to Biccamera (the Japanese equivalent of Best buy/Future Shop). My plan was to get a Multi function printer, and I had pretty much had my heart set on an Epson that was also a laser printer. I didn't think I would need colour too much, but wanted something that was stable and cheap to run. The problem with this printer was that it was pretty expensive, costing close to $500cdn (they are par now... do I have to stipulate that???) Well after looking around a bit, we found a nice HP, multifunction, memory card reader, fax, scanner, copier... basically the whole works. It was also half the price of the Epson. I still hummed and hah'd though. The reason for this was after having the printer fail after such a short amount of time I wanted to get something that would perhaps longer... well in the end I decided to go with the HP. Not for the price (well... not only) but because of the fact it did colour, and it was a nice feature. I have been very happy with the quality of the photos that it prints, and it turns out that it also does two sided printing - which I like a lot.

So Fraser, you can send me your thanks. I have also bought lots of HP photo papers, ink and regular paper...

My Pimp Ride

Last month I took ownership of my new "used" car. Well it is not much, but I am pretty happy. Strange to think that this is actually the first car that I have owned myself. It is the first car that I have had day to day since the old baby blue Toyota Tercel wagon. This is not really much better on the cool factor, but driving around Tokyo it is really the perfect choice I think. Its small, and good on gas, which for getting around the tiny streets in my neighbourhood is a real necessity.

Driving in Tokyo is something that is a real experience. Wipping along small little roads, with far too much traffic, too many lights and too many parked cars. Beside your car you have cyclists often old women, mothers and kids puttering along old beat out bikes with no air in their tires. Highschool girls on pink scooters lane splitting like no hells angel would back in North Amercia. All this and signs that I am often unable to read. Makes for a fun trip.

The car its self was pretty loaded in the day, it is small but actually quite big inside. Which is nice as you do not really feel boxed in. The car has all the things I was looking for, including a navigation system. This is handy, as I was saying about the signs not in a English... makes it a hell of a lot easier to get from A to B.

We've made one pretty long trip out to Gunma... was just shy of 400km for the round trip. A lot of fun, and it went really smoothly, and I am looking forward to my next one where I hope to go and get out of Tokyo for a little bit.