紅葉 - Fall Colours

Today is a sunny day but there's a fair bit of wind blowing.  I drove up to a local shopping mall and there was some traffic congestion because a tree had been knocked down and it was blocking part of the road.  Later on, in the mall as we were heading towards the checkouts, the lights flickered off and then on a few seconds later. Then they went out for good.  I overheard a staffmber sauy "Evacuate " so we left empty handed.  We checked out another shopping centre and it had suffered the same fate. 

Later on in the afternoon I returned to the second place to see if power had been restored at the credit union branch there.  Unfortunately it hadn't been so all I had to show for my little sojourn were some photos of fall colours. 

「送別会」- Going Away Party

Last night we had a send off party for a co-worker who is going to move to Nagano prefecture.  The usual place where the Yamagata crew go was holding a Halloween party so we ended up at a gyoza restaurant called Mitsuboshi Gyoza.  They have two locations and I almost mistakenly headed to the wrong one. 

For simplicity's sake we settled on the ¥3000 course which featues a serving of fried gyoza 🥟, appetizer veggies, karaage chicken, and a serving of boild gyoza along with a two hour all you can drink menu.  I added an order of ponzu gyoza and another person added an order of cheese gyoza. 

An autocorrect demon messed up a notice in the loo to a certain degree of hilarity.  Instead of cautioning about drinking too much booze it cautioned against looking at booze too long....

Addendum: Today I learned that the restaurant advised us that they had forgotten to serve our party a fried rice dish which was included in our set menu.  So they reimbursed us ¥1000.

Most Likely a Pirated Kit - 1/700 USS Arkansas

I won't be posting build progress reports on the 1/700 Arkansas (update: on Oct 22nd I posted a photo of it on Plurk with the name USS Incomplete).  It appears to be pirated version of the Tom's Modelworks kit.

The copy I have may be a pirated version of the first pirated version.  Here's a look at the first pirated version....

Like the original, there is hole in the deck missing for the port slanted tripod mast leg.

Smaller parts....

The boxtop I have has a photocopied image....

You can compare the images of the above kit with the one on the Tom's Modelworks site:

https://www.tomsmodelworks.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=607

Yonezawa Rock Festival 2024

These days the annual Yonezawa rock music festival goes by the name of the Yonezawa Rock Festival.  There was a time when it was named "Doors to Freedom"...I'm not sure when the name change happened.  I suspect the name change came about when it started taking place at the Nishijo Tenman Park in town as opposed to the Onogawa Ski Slopes on the outskirts of the city.

This year's lineup featured the usual suspects such as Locofrank and Low IQ 01.  Less frequent participants on this year's card are SheTurnsMeOn and Good4Nothing.  Yama Arashi's debut was last year and the remainder are first timers (if I'm not mistaken).  Interestingly, this year included a spoken word/beat poet/rapper in the person of Muroha (sic).

The good thing about this year's festival was that we had good weather.  My guess is that the majority of times it's held it's raining.   One year it was cancelled thanks to an incoming typhoon.  This year's good fortune weather-wise came in spite of Locofrank's track recod of bringing rainy weather with them.

Here's a shot of the festival site the night before the festival....

And here it is on the big day....

I had a hamburger for lunch and a bowl of imoni (potato stew) as a light dinner....

They have signs up requesting guests not to photograph or take video of the acts when they're on stage.  Thus no photos of the performers in this blog post.

The night was clear and once it got dark the temperature dropped a bit.  Oh yeah, the variety of yellow flags around the site named sponsors and supporters.

For me, the highlight of the festival was the last band, G Freak Factory.  They invited kids to come up on stage for one song that was about the future and essence of community.   And they had members of other bands on stage to do adlib raps with them in their encore performance.

Addendum: Forgot to add a ohoto of my CD purchases at the festival....

1/700 USS Arkansas - Part 1

I took the plunge and put down about $100 on a resin plastic model kit of BB-33 USS Arkansas.  I received it this morning and opened up the box to examine the kit parts. When I unwrapped the hull I made an unpleasant discovery; two of the gun tubs had been damaged.

This is the port side one:

And this is the starboard side one:

I need to cut some thin plastic card to make the parts of the deck which protrude over the casemate gun mounts and then fashion splinter shields also from plastic card.

Removing the casting plug at the stern was done rather quickly with a hacksaw:

There is a major problem I hope to able to fix with the technique of heating the part with hot water and bending it into the correct shape.  The hull is sagging such that the bow and stern are higher than the centre:

As for her paint job; I think I'll go with Ms 21, overall 5N Navy Blue.  The kit claims to be a model of her in 1944.  She was painted in Ms 31a / 7b in November of 1944.  The kit doesn't have a paint guide drawing and the black and white box top image shows the ship in a single colour.   So I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping the kit depicts her in her early/mid 1944 configuration.

What Did They Just Say? - Part 2

I got a few more of those Yamagata dialect drawings last night.  Here are the words I learned of from that batch:
"Shemakoi" - cramped (space wise)
"Naeda!" - What's up?/What's wrong?
"Kosukage" - Have a seat
"Shikagu" - to scratch
"Shinigiru" - to pinch

What did they just say?

Last night a student brought in some copies of drawings made by someone whose last name is "Tsuchiya" (sorry, didn't catch the given name) who had had an exhibition or event at a local museum.  The drawings illustrate Yamagata dialect words and phrases.  Here are the words and one phrase on those drawings;

こちょぴたい　- "Kochopitai" - ticklish 
このげ　- "Konoge" - eyebrow hair (singular)
たがずく　- "Tagazuku" - to cling (to someone else) / clinging 
しゃあますする　- "Shamasusuru" - to become confused and unsure of what to do (sic)
どさがいぐべ　- "Dosa ga igube" - "Let's go that way"

Update Oct 9th:  I met the student who brought in the prints in class tonight (she attends two classes a week).   The artist's given name is Yoshiharu and he's originally from Tsuruoka.   He's known for either illustrating and/or writing children's books. The prints were acquired at the city library and not a museum.