The Painmobile

According to Wikipedia:

Itasha (痛車?), literally "painmobile", is a Japanese term for an otaku fad of individuals decorating the bodies of their cars with fictional characters of anime, manga, or video games (especially bishōjo game or eroge). These characters are predominately "cute" female. The decorations usually involve paint schemes and stickers.

They are called this because it is painful to be seen driving them.

Nagano Part 2

continued…

We returned to the present day with a trip to their primary school. The building that molded the mind of my lady and all her little sibs. I was surprised at the size, or the lack thereof. but apparently there are only 130 odd students there so that would explain it.

Messing around on the playground for no reason in particular. Was fun. It had no real purpose but then not much of the trip did. It was more about spending time with them than doing anything in particular.

But it was physical activity. and physical activity takes energy which needs to be replaced before long.

Good thing the city is famous for it’s soba. The restaurant we attacked was special indeed. It was attached to an old sake winery that had been converted to a museum.

 

Nagano Part 1

On the last day of 2010 I went over the border to The frozen mountainous wild lands of Nagano. Apart from the briefest of visits to the Karuizawa town limits when I drove Usui, It is a prefecture that I had never been to, never wanted to go to and for that matter never really knew anything about apart from the fact that it was cold, covered in snow and had monkeys that bathed in hot springs. It took on a different meaning when I started dating my lady, since it is where she hails from. Over the months we have been together, Her little siblings had grown to know and show fondness for me so We decided it was time that I got around to meeting them. So I boarded a Shinkansen (bullet train) and took the (rather short) trip into the unknown.

Hit the jump to

Shots #35 & #36 Faster than a speeding bullet

Not really but its still quick. A magnificent machine that carried me to Nagano for a great final day of the first decade of the 21st century. Well not quite…

Mine was a little less impressive looking:

It will be a long post…For now, this will do for a preview.

Shots #34 Moo Mofo!

Enter the Rabbit…

Its been more than 2011 years since the Human race came into being, but this is the system we are using, so it can’t be helped. Have a good one. Tie up at least one bunny girl this year.

Shots #33 Oh…

indeed.

Let there be light.

The lady and I took a trip up the mountain to see the Illumination at Lake Haruna.

The town and part of the lake atop the mountain was turned into a magical illuminated wonderland of LEDs and snow… more after the jump ;)

The Clutch and the Master

So the shifting on my new car had been getting progressively harder. I first got me some badass (and pricy) Motul tranny oil but it didn’t fix it, just stopped the grinding. I decided before I go spending TOO much getting it overhauled or replaced, to replace the clutch Master and slave cylinders. Contacted a buddy and he ordered the parts and helped with the install this past weekend.

The result………

Omlette Cake

No shit… that's what it was called. Needless to say I was a little skeptical.

Upon closer inspection it was just a foldover cake of sorts. had nothing to do with omlettes aside from maybe the shape. It could just as easily have been a Calzone cake.