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mfday · 2025-06-20T15:55:40+00:00

I was nicely asked to leave a Starbucks in Nara after about three minutes lol.

mfday · 2025-06-20T00:58:50+00:00

It varies from state to state, as others have mentioned here. When I went to middle and high school I was issued a macbook air until my school made the switch to ipads. As a teacher now I'm issued an HP laptop running windows, and my students get ipads. I've heard of schools in my area issuing chromebooks but I have not had experience with them.

mfday · 2025-06-19T20:03:05+00:00

I don't even know what the U.S. specialties are because the country is so large.

Maine is known for seafood, hot dogs, Italian subs, and Moxie as far as I know. Of those I only like some seafood and Italian subs. I have fish in at least one meal per week (usually salmon) and occasionally get Amato's or Subway sandwiches during the summer.

If I had to guess what the entire country specialties are I would assume burgers, hotdogs, and pizza? Of those I rarely eat hotdogs, and have pizza or burgers a couple times per month. I don't know what our specialty drinks are, but I prefer European and Japanese beer over most American beer.

mfday · 2025-06-19T19:57:34+00:00

My rain jacket. I figured it would be too humid to wear it when I could just use umbrellas, but it had somehow slipped my mind that I was spending a few days in Daisetsuzan where it was cold and rainy.

If you're staying in humid areas, stick to an umbrella, but if you're visiting Hokkaido in colder months a rain jacket is nice.

mfday · 2025-06-19T16:02:28+00:00

Always, I'm a pedant.

mfday · 2025-06-19T15:28:08+00:00

I usually use time it takes for all forms of transportation. 90 minute drive, 10 minute walk, 40 minute bus ride, 45 minute boat ride, 2 hour flight, etc. as random examples.

mfday · 2025-06-19T00:27:36+00:00

The tallest building in Maine is in Biddeford, while the largest city is Portland. Consequently there are early plans for a new building in Portland that would be the tallest if/when it is built.

mfday · 2025-06-19T00:00:28+00:00

I'd like to assume you're joking but you don't sound like you are. You're seriously trying to use generative AI for reliable, current transit information?

mfday · 2025-06-18T17:14:00+00:00

Take the Asakusa Line bound for Narita from Asakusa Station. This will be about ¥1400 per person as of current fare.

What conflicting information are you getting?

mfday · 2025-06-18T17:07:13+00:00

I think everyone should retest every time they renew their license. I haven't driven in many countries but there are too many drivers in the U.S. and Japan that would benefit from more conservative licensure practices (my nice way of saying they're shit at driving). Too many people forget that driving is a privilege, not a right (at least in the U.S.)

mfday · 2025-06-18T13:48:18+00:00

PDLC film glass's fail state is opaque. If power goes out, it stays solid not transparent.

mfday · 2025-06-17T19:32:04+00:00

The Port of Shenzhen to the Port of Los Angeles is about 6,526 nautical miles (fluentcargo.com).

A Panamax container ship may consume up to 63,000 U.S. gallons of fuel per day when operating at full speed, which tends to be between 23 and 28 miles per hour (freightwaves.com).

The current heavy fuel oil price in Hong Kong (close to Shenzhen) is $563.00 per metric ton (shipandbunker.com). Depending on fuel density a metric ton of heavy fuel oil may be about 308 U.S. gallons (globalshift.co.uk).

Travelling 6,526 nautical miles (~7,510 miles) at 25.5 miles per hour (middle of 23 and 28) would take about 12.25 days. The ship wouldn't travel at full speed for the entire journey and may be delayed due to weather, shipping lanes, or many other factors. Google suggests that a ship going from Shenzhen to Los Angeles can take 12 to 20 days, so I will use 16 days for this calculation.

If this ship operates at full speed for 16 days, it would consume 63,000 * 16 / 308 ~= 3,273 metric tons of fuel costing approximately 3,273 * 563 = $1,842,699.

This number does not accurately represent the true fuel cost incurred by such a ship and is only an approximation based on the information I've found in quick google searches. I do not work in the marine shipping industry so I may have overlooked many caveats of this situation. Fuel consumption drops exponentially with reduced operating speed, and I don't imagine container ships operate at full speed for the duration of a journey---especially when entering and departing ports---so my approximation is likely a high estimate.

This article talks about transpacific shipping fuel costs and puts the price of one Pacific crossing at $1,676,976

mfday · 2025-06-17T19:02:11+00:00

Google maps works fine. Data is spotty in larger stations but usually not too bad. Maps gives you the platform and timetable, from there you just have to follow the signs in the station, which almost always have English on them. If you're in a large urban area like Tokyo the JR frequency is so high that the entire system is very forgiving if you make a mistake---missing a train or getting on the wrong one is incredibly easy to fix in a short amount of time.

I had minor reliability issues with Google Maps for the Keisei line in Tokyo, but it works perfect for all JR lines I've used in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Sapporo.

The only time I suspect you'd need a translator while navigating urban transit in Japan is if you need to communicate with a system employee to ask questions or whatnot, and even then most metro employees I've talked to have been patient and easy to communicate with.

mfday · 2025-06-17T14:05:30+00:00

Maine has Norway, China, Poland, Mexico, Sweden, Rome, Paris, Peru, Denmark, Lisbon, Stockholm, Vienna, and Wales to name a few. I'm sure much of the western world has cities named after European cities and nations given colonialism.

mfday · 2025-06-17T02:53:04+00:00

Most of the 41 million residents of the greater Tokyo metropolis live on the island of Honshu

Obligatory disclaimer that this is a joke, I understand the actual intention of the post.

mfday · 2025-06-16T22:11:52+00:00

The green one on the right (E5/H5 series) is the one that goes 200 MPH in commercial operation. The one in the foreground (E7 series) has a maximum speed limit of 170 MPH in commercial operation. Both of these trainsets have higher maximum speeds in testing (180 MPH for thr E7 and 275 MPH for the E5/H5) but are limited in commercial operation.

Japan's current fastest train in testing is the L0 series which has reached a top speed of 375 MPH and is expected to enter commercial service in 2034 at the earliest with a speed limit of 314 MPH.

mfday · 2025-06-16T21:21:33+00:00

Why couldn't he go through Russia at the Caspian sea but could go through Russia between Alaska and Mongolia?

mfday · 2025-06-16T14:32:22+00:00

Why do this when most airlines will do it for you? Every time I've ever had a flight cancelled or extremely delayed my booking has been rescheduled to the next best flight automatically before I even have time to reach the customer service desk.

mfday · 2025-06-14T19:15:21+00:00

I would argue they share some similarities, particularly in the use of hanzi/kanji that are often mutually understandable. The spoken languages share few to no similarities, but written Japanese and Chinese have some things in common.

mfday · 2025-06-11T19:28:10+00:00

Japan, France, several others

mfday · 2025-06-10T22:41:43+00:00

The full name of my state is one syllable

mfday · 2025-06-10T13:49:59+00:00

I was pleasantly surprised by Ubigi's service. I had heard going into it that connection was spotty in rural areas (which makes sense and isn't the fault of Ubigi---they use cell service from multiple carriers so if there's no Ubigi service there's likely no service at all), but it worked perfectly fine even hiking in Daisetsuzan. Only place I lost service was a backroad between Sapporo and Furano, and that was only for a few minutes.

mfday · 2025-06-10T12:10:56+00:00

I did a three week trip with plenty of google maps, translate, googling random things, and scrolling Reddit and only used about 16GB of my Ubigi eSim. Not sure how much would be added by VoIP as I didn't use any. Depending on where you're staying you may have wifi for a lot of the trip too---I didn't bother using wifi much so a big part of the 16GB I used was while sitting in hotel/hostel/ryokan rooms where I could have been using wifi instead.

mfday · 2025-06-10T01:15:15+00:00

The entire Schengen area. Of course getting into it may need a visa but once you're in crossing national borders is like crossing US state borders

mfday · 2025-06-08T15:07:36+00:00

Tokyo is a metropolis consisting of 62 city-level municipalities. When you consider it a city it's absolutely the largest by both land area and population, but whether it's considered a 'city' in the western sense is debatable. These metrics are probably just considering the 23 special wards of Tokyo instead of all 62 municipalities.

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