So back in early June I attempted to make a reservation at the Anshin Oyado capsule hotel in Akihabara. Unfortunately there was nothing available on the days I wanted. I then made a reservation at their Shinjuku hotel. When I checked the confirmation email I noticed I had only made a one night reservation instead of two nights. Rushed in and made a second reservation.
Got back to Japan today…went to the hotel in Shinjuku…system couldn’t find my reservation. Staff looked at my confirmation email…it was for the Shinbashi hotel. Oh gawd… 🙄
Staff at the Shinjuku hotel kindly phoned the Shinbashi hotel and cancelled my reservation. Also advised me they had vacancies but I could save a little if I made reservations online. Thus I made on the spot online reservations at the Shinjuku hotel while standing at their front desk…got a discount for having arrived by express train by doing that. 😅
Speaking of express trains...today I took the NEX to Shinjuku instead of my usual Keio bus to Tokyo station. Last time I took the NEX I had a small problem; I dropped my ticket on board the train. Found out it was missing when I got to the exit turnstile. The staff there let me pass through after I correctly answered when asked what the fare from Narita to Shinjuku was... 😅
The livery of this train is different from the livery worn by NEX trains at the time of my missing ticket incident.
First...I had wanted the title of this entry to be "A Day Trip to Victoria Sidney". But, I can't get the strikethrough font to work in the title bar. So I went with what I guess is the next best thing.
Originally I intended to meet up with two people in Victoria, where neither person has any connection to the other. As luck would have it, one party offered to meet me in Vancouver. There, the challenge of setting up a suitable itinerary...resolved in a snap.
This time around I rose early from bed and drove down to the Ladner Exchange to catch a bus to take me to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal. In my previous trip there a few weeks ago I had stayed overnight at a friends' house and gone to and from Vancouver Island with them.
Once on board the ferry, I popped into the gift shop to check to see if they had a book I had spotted at the Duke Point ferry terminal shop...just when they had closed. That book was about the build up to and the resolution of a trade conflict between Spain and Great Britain. The thesis being that the resolution of the conflict eventually led to the shape of Canada as we know it today...or something along those lines. A scan of the books on sale didn't turn up that title but it turned up another one. Flipping through the pages I came across one where words "Beet farming"(sic) caught my eye. At that instance I decided to purchase the book. Why? Because beet farming was one of the stops in my grandfather's life.
I finished reading about half the book over two ferry rides. Having caught my mother's interest when I mentioned some interesting passages after returning home, I left the book with her. I'm going to let my sister know about the book so she can have a chance to read it. After that, I can pick up the book on my next trip home.
Anyway, after being greeted by my somewhat long lost friend (that's a story for another day), we proceeded to the BC Aviation Museum. That was a spot my MINI drive friend had made a quick stop at a couple of weeks ago. I had invited him to join me on this trip but he declined as he couldn't fit it into his schedule.
Now my Victoria friend asked me if I'm a plane nut but I don't think I've crossed the line into plane otakudom. Yes, I do have a significant interest in aircraft but it's not something I'm obsessed about. In fact, my visit to this museum is my first visit to a museum dedicated to aircraft and aviation.
Among the usual collection of aircraft, interesting aircraft parts, replicas, models, displays about aviation history, restoration projects is a kids corner. As I passed through that section I caught side of the name HMCS Magnificent. Ah1 A ship. Now you have my interest. The exhibit displaying this name turned out to be a challenge to catch an arrestor wire on a carrier deck while controlling a descending model airplane.
Don't know if they used AT Harvards as deck landing trainer aircraft in real life...
After examing the control stick and accompanying signage challenging visitors to catch the wire on the carrier below, I set up the airplane and let it drop down towards the ship....
In a split second I saw that I had successfully caught the second arresting wire. Having done that I set up the aircraft for a second run and passed the stick to a curious youngster whose mother didn't have a clue what this whole contraption is about.
Now what my MINI friend had been interested was the Hawaii Mars water bomber parked outside the museum hangar. And that is a monster of an aircraft....
Because the plane sits on land which is technically part of the neighbouring airport, visitors must be accompanied by a guide when viewing it. Our guide was a former pilot who gave an informative tour of not only the Hawaii Mars but also an optional look at several nearby aircraft including one used by Phil Gaglardi, a colourful character who was once the BC minister of highways.
Now, the wingspan of the Hawaii Mars is almost 61m. The wingspan of an H8K flying boat is 38m. There is a single H8K on display in Japan and after seeing the the Hawaii Mars, I've now got the itch to make the journey to view the H8K. Oh, and from what I found on Wikipedia, the Hawaii Mars is actually Hawaii Mars II. The first one sank in Chesapeake Bay in August 1945.
When we left the museum I was a touch surprised that it was about 1:30pm. We had arrived at it at 11:00 or thereabouts. Seeing what time it was we headed into Sidney to get lunch.
The rest of the afternoon was spent strolling through the commercial district. There was a bit of gin tasting, a coffee break, stops at a few shops, and finally a drink to cap off the day....
This llama was cute but it wasn't enought to get us into the shop.
I noticed later that there were number of benches with sculptures on them. Funny thing is that I hadn't noticed them on my last visit.
These are in a hotel on the waterfront. And the wall decorations are not artwork. They appear to living moss.
Another Hoyne beer to enjoy! Previous product I had was their dark ale when my MINI friend and I stopped off at the Mission Creak pub and restaurant.
It's a nice view and a nice sequence of shots of the business and commercial district I described in my previous A-Train 9 post. We start from a bit past midnight and proceed to daylight then further on to noon....
Not quite yet the part of town that never sleeps...but probably getting close to it.
It's a beautiful morning with a view in the distance where a waterfront shrine in the style of Itsukijima Shrine will be placed.
Almost high noon....
I like this night time shot of the district from the opposite side....
I found the reflection of the city lights on the surface of the sea to be a nice touch.
Now, at the time I took those screenshots, and actually even now, I haven't built an airport. So any flying objects, of which there are some in the above pictures, are just things floating by or passing through. For the things floating by we have these hot air balloons;
I have no idea why they are in the air around midnight....
And here is our old buddy Santa Claus on board his sleigh pulled by flying reindeer
A closer look at Santa reveals that he appears to have modernized his sleigh with a digital navigation display;
Which way St. Nick?
And then there are the balloons. A friend said it would be kind of neat if I could get a shot of them from below. After telling him that the task would be a bit difficult, I had a bit of luck and found them in the optimal position for which I could get a ground up look at them;
Though I did discover that the baskets were empty;
Nobody there....
I'm not sure if I've seen the hot air balloons in broad daylight. Perhaps not. Their general flight path takes them from the western mountains, across the northern arm of the river delta, and down towards the coast line and the big business and commercial district.
The last entry in the list of IFOs (Identified Flying Objects) is an airship;
This craft also seems to frequently appear at night;
And just to be ahead of the game, I got a shot from below;
The queen of the air floating gracefully in the night sky
Studying this airship a bit, I realized it has no means of propulsion. And I don't recall if the game played the sound of a propeller when it passes overhead. Oh well, checking on that can wait until later.
I'm guessing that one might see helicopters once an airport is constructed. If I recall correctly, one could see that kind of aircraft in the startup video of version 1 of the game. Okay, I checked and there is one;
But the caveat here is that the actual game contents may not match what is shown in the opening video.
So that is the end of this summary of what one can see overhead in A-Train 9.
While this is part 2 for the F3 entries on my blog, the subject of this entry is the fourth leg of the Vancouver MINI Club drive. I believe the second leg took the group out to the west coast of Vancouver Island. The third leg had them travel through the Sunshine Coast north-west of Greater Vancouver.
Now the fourth leg was originally supposed to take in the Sea to Sky Highway and then carry on through Pemberton to eventually reach Cache Creek. But wildfire warnings had been issued for the Pemberton region. Thus the group decided to meet in Richmond, proceed to Mission for lunch, and then carry on along the north shore of the Fraser River up to Hope and then take the Hope Princeton Highway. The final destination of the leg was to be Merrit.
My friend and I had planned to meet the group at Porteau Cove. Since the new rendezvous point was closer to home, we took the time to have breakfast at Denny's. Their current promotion is Canadian Grand Slam Breakfasts. I indulged in the Maritime Slam which features lobster.
At the rendezvous point I noticed that one driver is a fan of "Chiikawa"....
I'm not totally familiar with the roads in the Fraser Valley so I'm not exactly sure I'd be able to retrace our drive in Apple Maps. I'm aware that we passed under the Patullo Bridge replacement and the new Port Mann Bridge. Also, we crossed the Fraser River using the Golden Ears Bridge. We eventually found ourselves at a restaurant/pub in Mission. This establishment was decorated with a number of mid 20th century items....and I failed to take note of the name of it.
For me lunch was a sleeve of the Hoyne Dark Matter beer and a pesto chicken pizza.
In case anyone is wondering, no I did not consume all of this monster. A slice went into the box to take home with us.
Sitting not far from my seat was a jukebox. Upon closer inspection I discovered that it was not loaded with 45rpm records. This machine was loaded with CDs.
After lunch my friend and I parted ways with the group and headed home. After a short rest we headed over to the local Jollibee restaurant to buy dinner.
It was a long time ago when I last set foot in a Jollibee restaurant. And that one was in Manila! So this really was a case of "Well hello stranger".
So that concludes my participation in the F3 drive. Though I was a passenger in those legs I was present. I believe it might be as much as a week before the drive concludes in Drumheller, Alberta.
So, this story starts and ends at sea...sort of. Okay, it really doesn't. But it does cross the Salish Sea twice. Or should I more properly state that it covers two crossings of the Salish Sea....
Now the start of this story is some ungodly hour of the morning to wake up at; 4 am or thereabouts. I was at a friend's house having arrived there the previous night. So after taking the time to make myself look presentable our party of three set off to board a BC Ferry vessel bound for Swartz Bay. Interestingly enough, at the ticket booth, the agent there didn't click in and note that the third person in the party, though a senior, wasn't entitled to board for free on account of being a non resident. I guess they weren't quite awake then either.
Having arrived too early for the purpose of our visit, a drive around parts of southern Vancouver Island with members and associated parties of the Vancouver MINI Club, we spent some time in the town of Sidney, specifically at a park on the waterfront and visiting one shop which was open at an early hour on a Tuesay morning. After that we were off to The Fickle Fig Farm Market (try saying that fast a few times) to pay our respects to a pair of Nigerian pygmy goats. Though the farm hand there stated that one of them was at least twice the size of what that breed usually is.
The bigger one is named Cashew and its partner is Nutmeg. The nearby sign said they like being scratched....
That location was the rendezvous point for the day's participants of the drive. After receiving a package of instructions we headed off behind the Victoria Airport, past Butchart Gardens, and on towards Sooke. The purpose of the drive was to take in the scenery and find some "interesting" roads to drive. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine what an "interesting" road might mean to the person behind the wheel of a MINI.
So you say a goose can gallop, eh?
The Share Stand seems to have taken over the farmers market.
Shirley it is delicious?
Our first stop was at diitiida, "drifted ashore", the mouth of a river known as that to the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations. It was a good spot to stretch our legs and discuss the information sign there illustrating which areas would be flooded if a local hydro dam were to burst. It also doubled as an illustration of which areas would be hazardous to be in if a tsunami were to come ashore. In the meantime I did a bit of decorating.
It might not have been upright very long but that was the point wasn't it? Impermanence.
After travelling over some winding and curved stretches of road we found ourselves in Port Renfrew, a community which had waited a long time for a promised road to be built.
A pretty place to be is it not?
A plaque inside the pub mentioned that one ship was guided in by the sound of people beating on washboards.
Lunch was had on the patio of the waterfront pub. Occasionally we heard a roar of cheers from inside. It was patrons registering their approval as the Spanish knocked the French out of the the World Cup.
From there we proceeded to Lake Cowichan. A pit stop to admire a tree growing out of a submerged tree trunk was skipped to the group being behind schedule.
The so called "Bonsai tree" from a distance.
Who would've thought there'd be a Japanese kei truck travelling along this stretch of road?
The unscheduled stop in Lake Cowichan came up as some drivers wanted to use the local facilities...which were locked. So we used those of the local Tim Horton's shop and bought items as signs of appreciation.
Our participation in the drive ended in Parksville. Instead of having dinner with the group we drove up to Coombs, did a bit of shopping, and then headed down to Duke Point to catch a ferry back across the Salish Sea.
Here is a reconstruction of the route taken that day. The Sidney to Sooke portion is an approximation based on what roads and landmarks I had made a mental note of while passing through that area.
Oh, yes. "F3" is a shortening of "Ferries Forests Fossils", the name given to the drive by its organizer. The trek started with this leg and will head across British Columbia towards its final destination of Drumheller, Alberta, home of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of paleontology.
On a clear day you can see...a fair distance with your point of view camera hovering at any spot on an A-Train 9 map. But, once more and more buildings appear on the map one gets a feeling, of a sort, as to how big the map is. Distant buildings do slowly vanish in the haze as the camera moves away from them. So one does get an iota of appreciation as to how much real life distance is being covered in the simulation map. Or perhaps not.
That's the funny thing about all these city builder and transportation system simulation games. One has it in the back of their minds as to what the distances are but once immersed in the game, can't get a feel for the in game distances to real life distances. When I think about the perception I had of 500m long race lanes I steared dragon boats down and try and equate double that distance to the 1km width of a small city in Simcity 4, I get that feeling that the game doesn't really have it right. It's like there's way too much squeezed in and next to 500m of road in Simcity 4 versus the spatial experience of hauling a dragon boat to a finish line 500m away.
One can get an appreciation of how things are apart on an A-Train 9 map by taking measure of how long one has to roll their mouse scroll wheel to get from one side of the map to the another. Inevitably you'll pull up the satellite view map and right click on the spot you want to see. A lot simpler and quicker operation to navigate the map.
Anyway, while plugging away with the map construction tool in the game for a while, I fancied that I'd build a downtown core-like area off in the south-east corner of the map. Why I made that choice I'm not quite sure. If I were to place a container ship terminal then a location closer to the edges of the map would be appealing. I suppose the cost of running freight trains from the wharf and off the map would be lower with the shorter distance.
So a "big" train station with the maximum even number of tracks was placed in that region. The roads, overpasses, underpasses, and elevated road were placed and then it was time to go off and do similar nonsense in a couple of other locations on the map. Then the whole lot was saved and then loaded in to actually start playing the game.
Here the light blue lines are railroad tracks, the white lines are roads, and blue cross hairs are focused on a train I was following.
So the above satellite view displays the general geography of the map; a river delta with three islands, and a large flat plane framed on three sides by mountains. About 21 months of game time have elapsed so there has been a fair bit of development taking place near the railhead located in the centre left of the map. Down in the centre bottom is an area which looks like this;
The highlight of the region so far being the big station with six tracks and tad bit intricate road system.
Up to this point I had done little to stimulate development. The principal stimulus is to provide building material. Then the player and game AI can jostle with each other to grab allotments in order to get at it, so to speak. The amount of cash on hand was obtained via transactions on the game's stock market. Generally I aim to triple the return on my investments and sometimes get lucky enough to get quadruple or quintuple return. So here it was time to put that money to use and reconfigure, mostly on a whim, the above arrangement. I had spotted a terminal style staion amongst the list of available ones and had gotten particularly enamoured with the one which sported an older style facade.
With the next snapshot I took I had a region with a fair bit more clutter on it. The little tourism orientation hamlet in the north-west had gotten out of hand and the urban sprawl had passed its primary level of single household dwellings and small businesses. Nestled not far from the railhead is a sake brewery which originally had rice paddies as neighbours. That business found itself situated a stone's throw away from a rather large motel. Don't have a shot of that on hand though.
The red areas have buildings. The yellow areas are agricultural and have fields.
And at this point in time I finished the reconfiguration of the big station....
Later, I did move the station a bit further to the right in order to place a taxi pool/rank at the gate of the station.
Being flush with cash, I went on a spending spree and up popped an apartment skyscraper, the Shinjuku Uniqlo store, a large police station, and numerous other garish buildings with large LED screens mounted on them.
The game's AI real estate developer is still at the single household dwelling and small business level.
A view of the district a couple of years down the line.
The game's AI real estate developer would eventually start to catch up with me. A botanical garden and large hotel eventually made an appearance. The hotel is the white twelve story building about centre left in this view.
View looking towards the station platforms from the perspective of an incoming or outgoing train.
By this time I've more or less stopped messing around with the district. I did a bit more road work after this screen shot was taken. Removed one underpass and re-routed some streets.
Gazing down on my attempt at building a busy Shinjuku-like district.
Now, going back to beginning; how big is this district? That's a good question. The foot print of the taller apartment buildings is 60m by 60m I believe. Same for the office skyscrapers. So most of the big buildings are probably within 500-700m of the station entrance. The above shot might encompass an area was much as 1.5km across. Who knows?
Writing about the next installment in the A-Train series which I tackled is a bit of a challenge. For I find the game to be a creature which must have been designed for train nerds alone. That image is impossible to avoid. The promotional game clip videos show a lot of stuff; buildings, roads, railroad tracks all over the place, cars, trucks, buses, balloons, helicopters, and trains...and more trains. The sad thing being that if one can't run the game on its highest settings then things don't quite look that pretty.
Furthermore the video introduction in the game goes one step further and shows one conspicuous class of vehicles which aren't present in the actual game...private automobiles. They and small water craft are available in a Simcity 4 like fashion of U-drive vehicles but they're not generated as automata. That compounded with the lack of people gives the game a highly sterile look and feel. Here's a link to the game intro video on YouTube;
Thus after a period of playing around with the game's controls and features in a sandbox construction mode, I stepped out into the great unknown and started playing the game in earnest. I put a small settlement on a map and attempted to grow it. To mark that point in time I took a screenshot of an early morning in the game as I started off on the journey.
As things stood, I went through a number of test, rebuild, test, rebuild, and test cycles until I arrived at a scenario which turned out to be reasonably interesting to tinker with. After letting it run a while I took a photo of this calm scene. Things look nice and peaceful but in the background taller buildings can be seen popping above distant trees.
Now the buildings popping up in the distance are the prelude to a realization that the game doesn't automatically build things close to stations. I suspect the optimal locations the game chooses to put up buildings are chosen on the basis of availability of building materials, transportation access, and in game economic factors. So I often found myself with large stations with single family dwellings on their doorsteps and office buildings, small parks, small businesses, and (sometimes) industrial buildings placed further away. And yes the game carries on the A-Train 8 behaviour of building roads first before puting up buildings.
In a corner of the map I placed a winery with some form of agriculture which resembled grape vines. Some more fields, a few houses, a bus stop, a road off the map, and power plants completed the scene....
I was hoping that if I provided building materials, the game would develop a quaint little settlement. I ran in a small train line, added a gift shop, and hoped that expectation would be on the mark.
Many game years later, this quiet little corner turned into anything but a small tourist draw.
Bluntly stated, the result is closer to an eyesore than a small quaint tourist hamlet.
This type of development would continue on all over the map. I found that if I attempted to bring in some sense of order with a road grid and reserved plots of land to regulate development, the game would balk and not build as expected. Either that or there would be some small fault in my controlling structures and the game would be unable to place buildings. All of this was necessitated by the lack of a land zoning mechanism in the game. Unlike a city builder game such as Simcity, the focus of this game is on the transportation system. They didn't call it A-Train for nothing. The company management aspect is there to keep the trains running. The urban development aspect a tool to cause urban sprawl which can be nurtured by the presence of public transportation. With enough urban sprawl the train company can turn a profit.
When I left for Canada I had a city of close to 170,000 citizens. I had one super station which saw over 350,000 fares pass through its gates. I guess there must be a lot of out of town visitors or otherwise 80-90% of the city uses that station at least twice a day.
One side note here; the game counts in myriads, which is standard practice in Japan. So the comma in a large number bunches digits into groups of four.
So I leave this post with a calm view of the proceedings from the north east corner of the map.....
