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Designing Pocket Productivity: There Doesn't have to be an App for That

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A while back I worked on an Agile development team, where we planned the work of our weekly sprint on a Kanban board. The board contained three columns: 'to do', 'in progress', and 'done', starting out with a bunch of tasks on post-it notes in the 'to do' column. Team members do tasks one-by-one, until they're all moved to the 'done' column by the end of the week. In addition to managing daily tasks in this way, I really liked the weekly planning and review that happened before and after the week of work, as well as the notion of limiting work in progress to one task before moving on to the next one.

Kanban boards are for teams. But I've often wondered, is there a way to have such a planning system in my pocket? Of course, the standard response to that question - and my own response for quite some time - was "There's an app for that!" ¹ But over time our smartphones have become a far more intense battleground for our attention. Install whatever task planning app you like, and Facebook and countless others will still be right next to it trying to pry your eyes and your time away from your greatest ambitions.

I wanted a pocket planner made from paper. And as it turns out, paper stacks up really, really well against any smartphone app:

	Smartphone	A Paper Planner
Battery life	8 hours or so	Friggin’ infinite yo
Distracting notifications	Wicked lots	0
Protective cover	Sold separately	Preinstalled; Free!
Thin, flexible display	No	Yes
Cumbersome lock screen	Yes	No
Mac/Win/Linux Compatible	Prolly not	Yes

Although there are lots of paper planners on the market out there, I couldn't really find a pocket-sized planner that fit my needs. And while there are lots of blank pocket notebooks on the market, most of them are... well... blank ². So I set about designing my own pocket-size paper planner, with a three-state kanban board in mind as my initial inspiration. I don't consider myself a designer, although I like to think I can design a little bit ³.

Below I've tried to document the process, partly for my own records, but also to illustrate the main principle behind the planner: Small, consistent baby steps, guided by a long term goal, are incredibly powerful.

Iteration 0: What would a kanban to-do list look like? (Hint: Ridiculous)

I started out by making a sort of three-state to-do list:

This proved to be completely silly as you can see, but it was a worthwhile exercise in that it showed me that three states weren't necessary at all ⁴.

Decision: Obviously if an item on the list at all then the first "to do" state is implied, which meant I only needed two check boxes for "in progress" and "done", as you can see in a subsequent iteration which I made soon after:

Iteration 1: Three-state Daily To-Do List, 12 Tasks/Day

I started out by simply printing small pieces of paper with my designed to-do list on it. Then I got the bright idea to bind a small book by hand, following a wonderful little tutorial by Youtube user Sea Lemon, containing enough pages for about a year.

Conclusions after testing:

I found I was putting evening tasks on the bottom (e.g. "remember the milk"), to remind me that they were to come later in the day. Maybe I could separate daytime and evening tasks?

Iteration 2: Designate bottom tasks for 'evening'

I got a little playful with this one, but the significant update here was formally assigning a lower grey section for evening tasks.

Without thinking too much about it, I also added more tasks per page.

Conclusions after testing:

I really don't need so many tasks per page. A gave a copy to a friend, and he told me the same thing. Decision: Reduce them!
At this point, I wasn't sure if I'd ever sell this thing, but I knew binding it by hand wasn't really scalable. (I had so much fun binding it though!) Hand binding is out.

Other ideas: Should I make a logo or brand for this thing?

Iteration 3: Reduced Three-State, 6 Day Tasks / 3 Evening Tasks

I felt really good about this design, and the sun and moon icons had me feeling pretty clever about myself. But perhaps the main improvement here is that I really pushed to reduce the amount of tasks per page.

You'll notice I also rolled out a snazzy blue bird logo, which is actually just a photograph of a kingfisher I took (my other hobby) and just traced it:

The blue color is literally color-picked from the bird's body. I also tried using a Japanese print-on-demand service, seichoku.com, to create an A6-size, perfect-bound prototype of this version. On a whim, I also printed up a tiny A7-size version (half as big as above) on my home printer to see how compact I could make this simplifed design. (I suppose this is iteration 3B, technically...)

Conclusions after testing:

After a few months of testing this design, I found I was frequently forgetting to check "in progress" when starting a task, and checking both boxes later when I had completed the task. Decision: Turns out I don't need even two check boxes. One is enough. (The good old single-box to-do list proves useful after all)
Perfect bound is a bad idea, because it doesn't lay flat on my desk. Saddle stitch is better.
The A7 version is super small, but yet the daily list isn't as cramped as I thought it might be.

BIG IDEA: How many of these A7 days could I fit on an A5-size spread? Could I fit a week, I wonder? Could I squeeze a week on a pocket-size A5 spread?

Iteration 4: Weekly Spread, 6 Numbered Tasks/Day, with Weekly Goals

This felt like progress. I had six numbered tasks per day, mercilessly cutting out the day and evening idea that I liked so much before in an effort to fit all seven days on a spread. Six numbered tasks per day is neat, because that's pretty much the Ivy Lee Method, which recommends prioritizing or limiting yourself to the six most important things you need to get done in a day. Sometimes less really is more.

Conclusions after testing:

I'm not using Saturday and Sunday sections very much, since I don't work on those days. And I suspect maybe most people are like that. Though maybe not. Hmm...
That horizontal line across the middle stands out way too much.

Iteration 5: Weekly Spread, 6 Numbered Tasks/Day, with Weekly Goals

Since I hadn't really used my planner as much on weekends, I combined Saturday and Sunday into one "day". So 5 weekdays + Sat/Sun + Planning + Review = 8 sections. That isn't awful, though for anyone who works weekends, I might have to sort out some sort of "flex" label later. For now, I decided to make what works for me.

I also lightened that middle line that I didn't like in the previous version. Do I even need it at all?

I returned to saddle-stich instead of perfecting binding, because it was just easier to lay flat. But in order to do this, I had to do some math to keep within their 48-page limit, because any more pages than that and they can't staple it. For 48 pages, I settled on 20 weekly spreads (40 pages) plus the cover (4 pages; front and back both sides). That's 44 pages, with 4 pages left. I decided that I could split the notebook into two 10-week halves, because it was sort of easier to wrap my head around 10-week goals. Add on a planning and review page for each 10-week half and I have 48 pages in total. Awesome.

I had seichoku print a few copies of that which I handed out to some friends for testing as well:

Conclusions after testing:

My task lines are not long enough to write on. I just don't have enough horizontal space and I'm writing in the margins a whole lot. That sucks.

Other ideas: I'm using a weekly spread and my tentative logo is a bird. Maybe I can do a clever "spread your week/wings" punny cover?

Iteration 6: Weekly Spread, two lines per task

By combining the checkbox and the list numbers, I could save some horizonal space. I also decided to make better use of the margins by printing right to the edge. This let me go from one line per task to two, which solved my problem of not having enough space to write. I also added some 'or flex' text to the Sat/Sun and 'Review' sections, for anyone who might want to work full days on weekend, though I think this still lacks clarity.

I also asked a designer friend to try a "spread your week" cover, which I thought was neat. When you lay the book flat, the bird spreads it wings. Yay!

Conclusions after testing:

The "Spread your week" idea for the cover was a bad one. And I probably should have resisted the urge to be clever here. When it comes to logos and branding, if it isn't something you'd wear proudly on a t-shirt, then you should probably ditch it. Decision: Ditch this cover design. Maybe go back to simpler bird logo.

Iteration 7: Same Weekly Spread, Simple Logo Cover

I was more or less happy with this design, and I decided to do a small print run of 1000 units via a printing company in China. I initially reached out to a company here in Japan to do it, but when I received no response (email) I decided to give the task to the company with the better customer service. I also created a modest home on the web for the project here.

Conclusions after testing:

I can probably further refine the inside design, as well as the instructions page.
The printer I went with did a decent job with the printing, but I found the stapling was had been done manually and was inconsistent at times. Thus, I had to examine all my planners and reject any where the staple was a little off-center. That turned out to be about 40 books, which wasn't too bad -- though disappointing all the same.

Ok, now what?

This is where I am now. So far, the process process of bringing a product into being has been far more educational that I ever could have expected, especially for a weekend side project. If you have any questions about anything above, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Future ideas:

Are any wholesalers interested in this? (If this is you, get in touch!)
Would any companies want a branded/white label version? (Contact)

Trello might be my favorite, especially if you need to involve other collaborators. ↩
Yes, I considered Bullet Journal, but to be frank I sort of zoned out during that long "how to" video. It obviously works for a lot of people, but regrettably, I'm not one of those people. ↩
Over time, I've found that it's far easier (and indeed, far more accurate) to describe myself to people using verbs instead of using nouns. ↩
The Japanese date input in the top right is just something that I kind like as a perpetual student of the language and as a resident here in Japan. ↩

The Stafford SF-S1: A Rare Japanese Replica of the Iconic Nirvana Unplugged Guitar?

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As a child of the 90s, Nirvana was my high school soundtrack. I wore out the MTV Unplugged album, the one where Kurt Cobain played a rare Martin D18-e, the now iconic guitar that went on to be the most expensive guitar ever sold at six million dollars. So when I recently took up guitar as a new pandemic hobby, the songs from the Unplugged album made for great beginner practice for me. A friend had lent me a Morris guitar to try ¹, which played wonderfully, but it had a sunburst finish that I just didn't like.

So when I started seeking out a new instrument, I was somehow paradoxically looking for a guitar that was not too pricy, and at the same time resembled the most expensive guitar in history, the D18-e.

The Martin D18-e was a famously weird guitar for the normally traditional Martin Guitar Company to make, as it was an electrified version of the their regular acoustic D18. The D18-e stands out for having two external electric pickups on the top and bottom of the soundhole, as well as three gaudy white knobs on the spruce top body.

For many Nirvana fans, a more common route to owning a D18-e replica would be to simply mod a D18-ish guitar (because D18s are pretty 'spensive) by adding pickups, knobs, and a switch. The NirvanaGuitar Youtube channel has a great video overview of a mod they did to a Sigma DM3, but as much as I like the Unplugged D18-e, I don't really want to hack up any guitars too much ².

As it turns out, there was a rather affordable alternative to a D18-e right here in Japan that most people don't know about. In the early 2000s, Japanese instrument company Kurasawa Gakki made a guitar that is often referred to as a D18-e replica:

The Stafford SF-S1.

There's really not much information on these guitars online (in either English or Japanese), so I thought perhaps to ensure that this corner of cheap knock-off guitar history is not lost to posterity, maybe I should write something about it ³.

The Stafford SF-S1 Guitar: The Unofficial Documentation

Japan-based Kurasawa Gakki has actually been a distributor of Martin guitars since 1989 ⁴, and while their Stafford line is still going strong here, the SF-S1 has been out of production for years. Although it is often referred to as a "Cobain D18-e replica," I assert here that it is not. Here's why:

Like the D18-e, this SF-S1 guitar has dual pickups above and below the soundhole. I've seen these referred to as humbuckers in multiple places online, and in a couple of places as mini-humbuckers, so that's probably the case. The pickup selector is a three-way switch (neck only / both / bridge only) ⁵.

Also like the D18-e, the SF-S1 has a spruce top and mahogany body. But that's about where the similarities end, because unlike the three-knobbed D18-e, the Stafford guitar has four knobs: two for the volume and two for tone of each pickup. And not only that, these four knobs are not giant white appliance-like knobs, but small brown Gibson-style knobs.

I have a detailed comparison below, but I would argue that the three white knobs are such a definining visual characteristic of the Unplugged D18-e, that without them any imitation would fall short. In truth, a feature-by-feature comparison shows that the SF-S1 is actually a sort of hybrid between a D18-e and its less famous but also rare cousin D28-e. And certainly at a glance, it looks far more like a D28-e, with its four Gibson style knobs:

Let's nerd this out even more with a detailed list of selected features for both the D18-e and D28-e, to compare with the Stafford SF-S1 specs:

	D18-e	D-28-e	SF-S1
Top	Spruce	Spruce	Spruce
Back & Sides	Mahogany	Rosewood	Mahogany
Knobs	3, white	4, Gibson style	4, Gibson style
Binding	Black	White	White
Fretboard	Rosewood	Ebony	Rosewood
Pickguard	Tortoise shell	Tortoise shell	Black
Switch	White	White	Black
Pickups	Dearmond	Dearmond	Mini Humbuckers
Pickup Color	Black, Silver mount	Black, Silver mount	Silver, Black mount
Pins	Black	Black	White

Ok. So replica or not, this SF-S1 guitar exists. The folks at my local Kurasawa Gakki told me that the SF-S1 guitar can indeed be found online, but not very easily. And even if you can find one, he said, it won't be cheap and might run around 100,000 yen.

As someone who spends way too much time online shopping on my PC, let me just say Challenge Accepted!

Needle in a Haystack

So after just few weeks of searching, I managed to find a Stafford SF-S1 on Yahoo Auction for the astonishingly reasonable price of 31,000 yen. The seller was surprisingly honest about the guitar, emphasizing the resemblance to the D28-e rather than playing up the Nirvana angle as most sellers do. It looked very promising, and barring a couple of scratches in the back it was in good shape. I placed a bid of 32,000, and was ready to go as high as 50,000 if I had to. The auction was closing on a Friday night, so my hope was that maybe few people would be obsessing over weird guitars on their weekend, and maybe it would go unnoticed. I was actually on the train home from dinner with a friend when I looked down at my phone and saw -- holy shit, I got it!

I resisted the urge to explain to those quiet Japanese passengers sitting next to me why I was suddenly all smiles. I didn't even know if it was a decent guitar yet, but there's something about winning an online auction that's just really fun. Looking back now six months or so after the purchase, I've only seen one or two of these SF-S1 models for sale online since, each time for around 50,000 -- so I think I got really, REALLY lucky not only getting it at that price, but even finding it at all ⁶.

How does it play, you ask?

Well, it's okay.

It's probably about what you'd expect for a 32,000 yen guitar. The low E string was a bit buzzy, and I took it to my local shop to adjust the action. They recommended replacing the saddle as well, and that improved it a bunch. I also added some new Martin strings for good measure.

Variants of the SF-S1

Given the close relationship of Kurasawa Gakki to Martin at the time this guitar was made, perhaps the SF-S1 was more of a tribute thing. They actually produced it in two colors: The SF-S1-N ('N' is for natural; the same color body top as the MTV Unplugged guitar) and the SF-S1-BS ('BS' for burst, I guess?). The latter, which I'll borrow from a Mercari listing, is pictured below. If Kurosawa Gakki were just trying to copy the Unplugged guitar with the SF-S1, I don't know why they'd ever put out this Sunburst variant.

In my research, I've seen another case of Kurasawa Gakki doing quasi-replicas of a rare model guitar, and that's their apparent remake of a Gibson B-25, the Stafford SLG360.

I should also note that there are three headstock logo variants for the Stafford SF-S1. In the picture below from left to right: there's the boring one which my guitar has, there's a sort of cursive scripty one, and then there is the Martin-wannabe-logo.

When I asked the folks at my local Kurosawa Gakki store, I was told that some of the SF-S1's were made in China, and some were made by the Terada factory, which is apparently the same factory where Japan-made Sigmas come from. I've seen mention online of these guitars being produced in Korea for the Japan market, but the shop person didn't know anything about that ⁷. He did note, however, that if you see a three-point truss-rod cover on the headstock, it probably means it was made in China. And while my guitar doesn't have any "made in China" text on it anywhere, I strongly suspect that it was made in China.

I can't be sure, but maybe there's a connection between certain headstock logos and the country of origin, but I couldn't quite nail this down, nor could the guy at Kurosawa Gakki confirm it for me

So what's next?

Now that I have my SF-S1, there are just a few not-so-intrusive adjustments I can do to make it more like the Unplugged guitar.

Thoughts on Repurposable Web Templates

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I'm still knocking around the idea of a simpler static site generator in my head. And as part of that mental exercise, I thought I'd start at the end and work backwards with what the output HTML should look like. What would a versatile web template look like for a personal portfolio or small business site?

TL;DR: This is what I came up with.

Ideally a repurposable layout should be simple enough that it can work for almost any content. But what are the design choices that lead to a "repurposable" template? I'll touch on a few of those below.

As part of creating this little template, I had to study up on my CSS understanding a little bit, and dive into things like Flexbox and Grid that I hadn't really looked closely at before. In the interests of sharing, here are a few of the portions of CSS that I really liked, along with some comments on why I'm using them. For this template, I also avoided using any Javascript, partially because I need to study up on it, and also because I really want to stay as simple as possible.

1. Root variables for setting theme colors

I'm sure any web designer worth their salt knows about these, and yet I rarely see them at the top of any CSS files I encounter in the wild. I'll use these to set my document colors, just so that they're easy to for any users to change (i.e. more "repurposable"), and in the interests of allowing for light and dark themes, I'll establish an easily swappable color-background and color-foreground variable as well.


:root {
  --primary-color: #00AEEF;
  --secondary-color: #cc5500;
  --page-background: ivory;
  --page-foreground: #333;
  }

2. One-Column layout, with a limited line length for optimal readability

I've often seen complex template layouts created with multi-column content block, and those are perfectly fine -- but if you want to re-use them later, it might be tricky to make your content fit. So for this template, I'll stick to one-column, and in the interests of readability, let's not run it too wide. The 50 to 70 characters per line rule is a best practice I see broken way too often on the web. And in the past I've used max-width of containers to enforce it, but thanks to Jeremy Thomas's brilliant little Web Design in 4 mins, let's use his recommendation of max-width: 50em along with some padding. We can set a line height of 1.5, and leave it unitless in case any dependencies end up using different units.


#maincontent {
    margin: 0 auto;
    max-width: 50em;
    line-height: 1.5;
    padding: 4em 1em;
    color: var(--page-foreground);
}

3. Full-bleed images by default, with option for narrow image constrained within the narrow body column

While I like the 50em width limitation for my body text, it's really nice to be able to break that constraint with images. So by default, let's make images full bleed, but retain the option of a "narrow_image" class to keep within the boundary. To do this, let's take a page from Kilian Valkov's and use the not() pseudo class to basically say, "anything that isn't an image or video within this maincontent container, keep it to 50rem wide".


#maincontent > *:not(img):not(video) { 
    max-width: 50rem;
    margin: auto;
  }

#maincontent img {
    max-width: 100%;
    display: block;
    margin: 3rem auto;
}

For images that you don't want to extend for the full width, let's add that class as well using media queries. Because after all, on mobile, this narrow column will extend full width.



@media screen and (min-width:800px) {

    #maincontent .narrow_image {
        max-width: 50rem;
    }
}

4. Minimal interference with header background cover image

I like putting white text on darkened photos in my header sections, but applying dark overlays comes at the cost of fading the photo into the... um... background. A happy medium is applying a bit of a text shadow to assist with the contrast. And this leaves the photo a little more visible by default. The 'screen' background blending mode seems to darken the photo the least. If you need a little more, try 'overlay' or 'multiply'.


.hero {
    background-image: url("../images/header.jpg"), linear-gradient(rgba(0,0,0,0.2),rgba(0,0,0,0.2));
    background-blend-mode: screen;
    background-position: center;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-size: cover;
    line-height: 1.2;
    padding: 10vw 2em;
    text-align: center;
  }

Closing thoughts

You can see the template in action here. The files, if you'd like to download and mess about with them yourself, are on Github. I didn't intend for this to look like the old standard Wordpress Twenty Twenty theme, but it does remind me of that a little bit. As for the nav bar, that was a little tricky as I did start with a collapsed mobile view (borrowing some ideas from here), with the media query declaring the "desktop view" for 800+ pixels. But I think it works well -- and there's no javascript involved.

Modding the Stafford SF-S1 to Recreate the Nirvana Unplugged Guitar

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In our last episode, I talked about my search for a guitar similar to the Nirvana Unplugged D18-e, and finding a similar - but far more affordable - Stafford SF-S1.

Once I got it, in order to bring the Stafford more in line with the D18-e guitar, there were a few easy modifications I could make. Let's go down through the list:

Bridge Pins
Oversized White Volume and Tone Knobs
Black Knob Labels
Pick-up Switch
Pick Guard
One Missing Piece: The Bartolini Pick-up
Overall Impressions

Bridge Pins

The easiest of these were the bridge pins, and I swapped in some ebony pins on my Stafford in place of the original white. It's entirely possible that D18-e guitars exist with white pins, so this is a minor detail anyway.

Oversized White Volume and Tone Knobs

Getting the white knobs was near impossible, because while finding large appliance style knobs to fit was easy, finding them in the appropriate off-white was not. Similarly, the D18-e knobs apparently had small black diamonds marks on them. After exploring some online options from some modders, I decided to buy some 25mm silver knobs from Amazon and spray them with some white acrylic paint. I had to be careful with excess paint around the bottoms, but in the end I think they were fine. I also detailed in the black diamond-shaped marks with a fine brush, and then put on a thin clear coat for protection.

Now of course, the big difference between this and the D-18 is that the Stafford has four knobs and the D-18 has three. I'm willing to live with four, because removing one and patching a hole isn't really an option.

Black Knob Labels

As for the black ring labels that go underneath the knobs, this was also a big challenge. In the end, I actually just designed something ¹ and then printed them up on regular computer paper and then sprayed on a layer of clear-coat. I didn't want to just apply the paper under the knobs, because they wouldn't have the right thickness, so I managed to find a 30mm O-ring in the plumbing section of my local hardware store which I could them stick the labels on. Being 5mm wider than the 25mm knob, this effectively just put a 2.5mm black border around the outside, which judging from pictures of the D18-e, was just about right.

From there, some sparse bits of double-sided tape could stick them onto the body. The result is below. It was a crude solution, but I'm actually pretty happy with it. Though I am keeping the original Gibson knobs should I ever decide to part with this guitar down the road.

Pick-up Switch

The black pickup selector switch was changed for a off-white one to match the D18-e. I have to confess here that I went through a couple of different white switches here, but none of them screwed on quite right. So in the end, I just painted the original black switch with an off-white color to match the knobs.

Once the knobs and labels were put on, I was quite pleased with how it turned out. It really did look very much like the Nirvana MTV Unplugged guitar.

Pick Guard

One change I didn't make was adding a tortoise shell pickgard instead of the SF-S1's default black. While this wouldn't have been hard, I always felt like the pick-guard on the Cobain guitar looked pretty dark anyway -- so for now, I'm keeping the black one.

One Missing Piece: The Bartolini Pick-up

Of course the big missing piece for a Cobain D18-e replica would be the Bartolini 3AV pickup, which are super rare and a little pricey, and most of the dealers (Sweetwater, etc) are US-based and don't ship to Japan. I did find one just recently, but I'll leave that for part 3, because that's another little mini adventure.

Overall Impressions

So what do I think of my new SF-S1 guitar? Overall, I think it plays pretty well, both when plugged into an amp and - pardon the pun - unplugged. The built-in mini-humbuckers sound decent, at least to my beginner ear. And so for now, I'll stick with it. If I grow out of it and want something better later, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

But everything kinda hinges on the Bartolini pickup, which I'm hoping to sort out in the next month or so. Fingers crossed!

If anyone wants the PDF of my design, get in touch with me. Printing it was a little tricky, because while my design is for an A4 sheet, most home printers do not print right to the border. So there was some trial and error in printing this a little bigger to compensate for the printer shrinking it down again. In the end, I think I had 34mm diameter in my design, which my printer then shrunk to the right size. ↩

Rediscover Murakami on a Tour of Tokyo

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This article first appeared in Japan-i Magazine in February 2011. Since that magazine is no longer running, I'm posting it here on my blog for archival purposes.

For fans of Japan’s most famous modern-day novelist, exploring the city with his life and literature in mind makes for a fascinating escape.

It has been four years since Haruki Murakami’s last novel "After Dark" was released in English. That’s a long time for dedicated fans who have already devoured his works and are waiting for something new. The reclusive nature of the author hasn’t given fans much else to consume. A few interviews here and there, but not much else. Even before the recent film adaptation of "Norwegian Wood," there has always been an impulse among some readers to attach visuals to Murakami’s words. Some hardcore fans have created videos on YouTube to accompany his stories. Similarly, the BBC filmed a documentary titled "Imagine," which seeks Murakami in locations around Tokyo and dramatizes some scenes from his fiction.

The beauty of Murakami’s writing is that the themes are accessible regardless of wherever the stories play out. Many of these stories could happen anywhere on the planet, and perhaps that’s why they’re so popular. But in the spirit of attaching real places to the author’s words, we thought it would be interesting to examine a few of the notable locations mentioned in Murakami’s novels and short stories, as well as places that hold a certain significance in the his life. While Murakami’s Tokyo is far more surreal than the real thing, it might be fun to keep some of these locations in mind the next time you find yourself wandering the city.

The Shinjuku underground: What lies beneath

At the very heart of Tokyo, Shinjuku is an obvious must-see for any visiting tourist. Busy nights illuminated with neon, lively with pleasure seekers — there’s much to see and do under the surface of Shinjuku and the Kabuki-cho district that a traveler might best avoid. In "after the quake" Murakami introduces us to Superfrog, a wonderfully serious character who warns that there are quite literally apocalyptic dangers lurking underneath Shinjuku, and he implores Mr. Katagiri to come assist him in an epic battle to save all of Tokyo. The next time you’re wandering in the vicinity of Shinjuku Station, be sure to give some thought to what might be there that you can’t see. Just as in "Superfrog Saves Tokyo" you may find that a mysterious and undiscovered world lies just beneath the surface.

Enjoy coffee and a book after dark

While many of us tend to panic as today turns into tomorrow and the ‘last train’ time approaches, you can always take a more relaxed approach and just stay out. Like Mari in Murakami’s recent novel "After Dark," passing the early hours at Denny’s with a good book and a coffee is not a bad way to spend the night. If you’re hungry, the chicken salad and nearly-burnt toast come highly recommended.

Take a musical journey

Murakami has attributed much of his literary inspiration to music, especially jazz. His prose is imbued with a rhythm that flows, and he often references songs and musicians. The writer once had his own jazz bar in Tokyo, as he explains in "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:"

I’d been running a sort of jazz club near Sendagaya Station. Soon after college - actually I’d been so busy with side jobs I was still a few credits short of graduating, and was still officially a student - I opened a small club at the south entrance to Kokubunji Station.

Naturally fans will be inspired to seek it out themselves, although what you’ll find there now is Cafe Jamaica Udon in place of Murakami’s bar which was called Peter Cat. If you do stop in for a bite, you might let your imagination take you to a time when the air on that corner was filled with jazz, cocktails, and coffee.

If you prefer your music a little more tangible there are still a number of jazz bars around town, including DUG near Shinjuku which was featured in "Norwegian Wood."

Seek your 100% perfect girl in Harajuku

Famous for it’s unusual street fashion, Harajuku is a favorite spot for people-watching. In his short story "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Woman One Beautiful April Morning," Murakami tells the story of a man who briefly encounters a girl in a Harajuku back alley and instantly recognizes her his perfect match:

Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me.

Of course even if stalking is not your thing (I kid, I kid...) Harajuku district has a lot to offer, with great shopping, a gorgeous green park, and Meiji Shrine nearby. But if you happen to find yourself navigating the side streets of Harajuku on a fine spring morning, be sure to keep an eye out for your own Mr. or Miss Right. If you missed them it’d certainly be a sad story, don’t you think?

A baseball epiphany

After Harajuku you might consider swinging by Jingu Stadium, the location where Murakami, while watching a baseball game, had his now famous realization that he could and should write a novel:

The crack of bat meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded first and pulled up to second. And it was at that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know what? I could try writing a novel.

And thankfully Murakami did try his hand at a novel, and eventually went on to give us many more, plus a ton of short stories as well. While we can’t guarantee that catching a baseball game at Jingu Stadium will induce you to write best-selling books, it would certainly be fun to spend an afternoon in the stadium that sparked Murakami’s writing career.

Rainy nights in Roppongi

With lively nightlife, a variety of restaurants, and a heavy expat presence, Roppongi is a great spot for a night out. In Murakami’s short story "Birthday Girl," which you can find in the collection "Blind Willow Sleeping Woman," a former waitress reflects on the night of her twentieth birthday. On that night she found herself working in an Italian restaurant with a view of Tokyo Tower, and she recalls how she met the mysterious owner who granted her a birthday wish.

You might not be granted any wishes, but an evening spent at the right restaurant in Roppongi could have some magical moments in store. Especially if it’s your birthday.

Keep a tally of passing bald men

This one is a little quirky, but stay with us. In "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle," Toru Okada goes along with May Kasahara to help her with an unusual job in Ginza. May, who does some work for a wig maker, is tasked with counting how many bald heads pass her by. Toru helps her out by keeping a paper tally while she calls out A, B, or C depending on which classification of bald has just gone by.

While we don’t recommend this as an especially fun recreational activity in Tokyo, it might be an interesting way to pass the time as you wait for your next train.

Aimlessly walking Waseda

Not far from Shinjuku lies Waseda University, the school where Murakami himself studied, which he would later use as a model for the university in "Norwegian Wood." Explore the campus if you’re in the area, or if you have an afternoon to spare, you might follow Naoko as she walks aimlessly through the surrounding neighborhoods, just as Watanabe did:

She turned right at Iidabashi, came out at the moat, crossed the intersection at Jinbocho, climbed the hill at Ochanomizu and came out at Hongo. From there she followed the tram tracks to Komagome.

Watanabe mentions that he visits the bookstores in Kanda. Bookworms would do well to drop in on this area, and perhaps pick up a copy of "Norwegian Wood" just to be a little "meta."

Of course "Norwegian Wood" was set in the sixties, and Tokyo has certainly changed since then. But if you’d like to explore the many other locations in the book, there’s a great list assembled over on Google Maps (in Japanese).

Coming soon: 1Q84

Murakami’s most recent work "1Q84," already selling well in Japanese, will be published as a single volume in English this fall. And while I have yet to read it, publishing house Shinchosha has an interesting webpage mapping locations from the book. The page is in Japanese, but it does offer a number of additional locations around town that you might consider visiting once you’ve read the book.

Norwegian Wood finally makes it to film

A film adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s "Norwegian Wood" finally made it to the big screen in December in Japan, 23 years after the book was initially released. While there have been some movie interpretations of his work in the past, the author has always been somewhat reluctant to allow a film version of "Norwegian Wood" to be made. This adaptation only came about after four years of negotiations between the author, director and producer.

While Murakami was open to the idea of the film being based outside of Japan, French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung preferred to film it in Japan using Japanese actors.

The rights to use The Beatles version of the song "Norwegian Wood" took some time to secure as well, as Apple Records owns the copyright. But the director insisted that the Beatles version be used. The song appears in numerous scenes during the movie.

The film stars Kenichi Matsuyama as Toru Watanabe and Rinko Kikuchi as the enchanting Naoko. Kikuchi was a 2006 Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress in "Babel" in 2006.

Surprisingly "Norwegian Wood" was not the only Murakami work to emerge on film in 2010. Kirsten Dunst starred in a low-profile ten-minute short entitled "The Second Bakery Attack," based on Murakami’s story of the same name.

Nothing Lost in Translation

Even though Haruki Murakami’s writing is mostly set in Japan, the themes are universal enough that the scenes could be set almost anywhere. His works contain vivid imagery and metaphors, unforgettable characters like talking cats, and Colonel Sanders - striking ideas that retain their impact when translated.

Murakami has been adapted into English by a number of translators who often work directly with the author. Jay Rubin recently spoke of his experience translating Murakami during a symposium at UC Berkeley. He noted that Murakami himself has been the translator of many well known English works, which helps when porting his works into another language.

In addition to winning acclaim among English readers and critics, Murakami is wildly popular in neighboring China as well. Even as political tensions between China and Japan run high, Haruki Murakami’s writing is perhaps now more popular than ever in the Middle Kingdom. Fans too impatient to wait for authorized Chinese versions to hit shelves crowdsourced the translations themselves.

Just last year opportunistic Chinese publishers tried to capitalize on demand for Murakami’s latest work "1Q84" by selling the book without permission via Apple’s App Store. When the book finally did hit the shelves in China this past May, it reportedly sold 1.2 million copies in its first month, showing that Murakami’s universal appeal can overcome old prejudices, and bridge cultural gaps like few others.

Bird Photography in Newfoundland: (Re)Discovering the Puffin

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This past summer I made a short two-week trip back to Newfoundland, Canada, where I grew up. When planning the trip for our family, I realized that there were a lot of tourist attractions there that I hadn't paid attention to before. Perhaps most notable (and also a pet interest now that I've taken up bird photography here in Japan) was the iconic provincial bird, the atlantic puffin.

I can never remember ever seeing one growing up, nor had I ever gone out of my way to seek them out. So for this trip, I decide to ask around and find out the best place to try to photograph one, or even a few. I knew I'd be visiting my brother's house in Witless Bay, which was coincidentally also home to an ecological reserve and North America's largest puffin colony. But when I asked a photographer friend ² where the best puffin viewing spot might, he advised that Elliston (a tiny town on the Bonavista peninsula) was the better location. And it turns out he was right.

The Puffins of Elliston, Newfoundland

In what might be the most misguided tourism slogan even, the town of Elliston is dubbed "The Root Celler Capital of the World." I don't mean any disrespect, but let's face it: a root cellar is not going to win any tourism awards any time in this century. And to be fair, it's hard to market a literal hole in the ground. Elliston should be hailed as the puffin capital of Newfoundland, and maybe even the whole world because of just how close one can get to the birds there ³.

Elliston is a short 15 minute drive from Bonavista, the latter being maybe the best tourist destination in the province right now, making Elliston doubly worth the 3.5-hour drive if you're coming from St. John's. Once in Elliston, road signs direct you to the puffin viewing sight (Google Maps), a small island you can approach from the south via an adjacent point of land tht juts out into the ocean. From there you can sit back and look across the watery gap that protects puffin rock, watching them as they fly circles around it or hop about their burroughs.

For best results, veer left

While you could satisfy yourself with the view from the point, one kindly photographer I met on the site advised me to keep clear from the right side of the point. Turns out, if that side of the point is empty of people, puffins will frequently perch there as you sit quietly just meters away on the left side. For anyone with a camera it's the perfect photo opp, as puffins stumble clumsily about the edge of the point.

While I've never visited any other puffin colony in the world (I hear they can be found in Iceland, Norway, Scotland, and Ireland ¹ too, among other places) but seeing puffins at such close range as you can in Elliston must surely be a rare experience. To get so close to puffins without any restrictive rules (save this self-policing of veering left) is really amazing. And what's more, the point faces north which means you have the benefit of enjoying a sunrise to the right in the morning and a sunset to the left in the evening. For photographers, that means a wide range of light to experiment with from morning to night.

Here are a few more of the snapshots I took of the puffins in Elliston:

Puffins (plus Whales) in Witless Bay

While Elliston was maybe the highlight of our ⁴ trip, we also made an effort to visit the Witless Bay colony. Unlike Elliston where the puffin viewing site can be accessed on foot, the Witless Bay site - aka Gull Island - is further offshore, typically accessed by boarding one of the local boat tours. We opted for Gatherall's Boat Tours, a company with a larger boat in the hopes that our kid wouldn't get seasick as she had last year when we visited Maui. But from a photographer's point of view, I understand that Captain Wayne's operates a smaller zodiac boat that can get you a little bit closer to the island. Gatherall's and the other tours with larger boats are required (by law, I think) to maintain a certain distance from the island in the interests of protecting the wildlife.

I was somewhat disappointed that the closest we could get to puffins was to shoot them when they landed in the water nearby, or if they flew by the boat ⁵. Thankfully this voyage had far more to offer than just puffiins, with spectacular whale viewing , as well as some other species of birds like murres.

Overall, I think if you haven't seen many whales before, then a boat tour in Witless bay is definitely worth the trip. And check out the Irish Loop Cafe for breakfast if you can as well. But if you're looking around for puffins, and if you can swing the trip, Elliston is by far the better spot.

You may have seen puffins (in CG disguises) in the most recent Star Wars film, parts of which were shot on Skellig Michael. ↩
Check out Alick Tsui Photography over on Facebook. He's a good dude, and he takes really good pictures. ↩
I should note that according to the Elliston website, the puffins are in the area only between May and September. ↩
I say "our" trip, because I think my kid enjoyed the puffins a bunch. Neighboring Bonavista proved a wonderful spot too. ↩
Prior to our trip I had emailed the Witless Bay reserve about if a permit to photograph was doable. Their reply was too late to accomodate this trip, but they did point to a permit application (PDF), though didn't go into detail on further instructions. ↩

Finding a Better Place for Music

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My kids deserve a good soundtrack to their childhood. I don't want it coming from a phone.

I forgot all about music. For 15 years maybe, in fact. It was that blurry time between my mid-twenties till I hit forty -- that time where real life tends to impose itself. But before all that music was a cornerstone for me. While I never played an instrument, I was an avid listener in my teens. My taste wasn't exotic or gourmet -- just standard 90s alt-rock heavy on Nirvana, Pearl Jam and all.

But that's not what's interesting.

Remembering back, what's most remarkable is how intertwined music is with... well... remembering. I have these really strong musical "memory markers." I mean really vivid, close-my-eyes-and-I'm-right-back-there memories.

I remember as a kid on car coming home from town after buying my first cassette tape, cruising up Kenmount Road at night, street lamps lighting the pavement orange as me and my family headed back home. The tape was Glass Tiger's Thin Red Line ¹. But the title track I thought, as we drove up the road, was just the perfect driving tune. The actual cassette was a bizarre transparent pink plastic, which was just super cool.

But my point is, we all have this. If you think back to a song or album you loved (or hated) as a kid, you probably have a really strong memory of some people or places to go with it. Maybe it's a mix tape from a girlfriend. Or maybe it's some shitty album your family had around. My own parents didn't have a lot of music around -- my dad had a Loverboy tape which I remember was a hard white plastic cassette with a chip missing on the corner.

Anyway, as a relatively new parent myself I wondered about music and my own kids. In the age of Spotify on-demand singles when we've ditched physical media and full album plays, what will be their cassette tape memory?

So naturally as a concerned parent in the 2019, I had to buy my family a record player.

I'm no vinyl hipster, but I mean if I can remember dinky plastic tapes, imagine what musty giant records will do, right? I took on this task with the same intent you might take to decorating your kid's room. This is the likely sonic environment for my kids' early years. These will be their memory markers until they start branching out to explore their own.

I didn’t own any records, so I’ve had to buy a small collection. This is where living in Tokyo comes in handy, as used record stores are not hard to find. A typical purchase is about 500 yen (or $5), and I tend to favor female artists as my kids are both girls. Current favorites are the Sound of Music Soundtrack, Heart's Little Queen (my older kid loves Barracuda), and ABBA's Greatest Hits. One unforeseen benefit of all this occurred to me this afternoon when the in-laws swung by for lunch, and suddenly there was this musical bridge between grandkids and grandparents.

Turns out a record player (or I guess any fixed sound system) in the living room also really improves your chances of being able to turn off the TV. Some of our family’s nicest moments this year have been cooking and eating with the TV off and some record playing. In the past, the TV was hardly ever off, so this alone makes the record player purchase a good one.

I'm still not sure how this will work. I still use Spotify myself - it’s wonderful on my commute - and I’m sure my kids will push harder for small screens as they grow. For kids who make music, iPhone and iPads will be awesome tools for output. But I'm glad that I can point to the record player in the corner as our family's place for music consumption instead of a smartphone or tablet.

It’s one area among many where the invasive small screens have been kept at bay.

For now, anyway.

No judgement please, this choice was purely the result of Canada's laws to promote a certain percent of Canadian content. ↩

Simple Static Sites for the Rest of Us

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Every now and then, I (or someone I know) have a need to create a very simple website. Now, regrettably the de facto website builder for the world has for a long time been Wordpress. And that's fine if you need a blog.

But what if you just need a simple website with just a few pages? Typical examples of this are:

A portfolio site with a "Work Samples" page, and maybe a page to contact you
A small business website, which has a "Services" page to tell what you do, and a "team" page about you and your staff. (Examples: a mom-n-pop restaurant, or a bed-and-breakfast, or a yoga studio)
A product page, like for my Bluebird Pocket Planner notebook, which I recently launched ¹.

If you are a web developer: No problem! You benefit from a recent renaissance in static site generators, and can build a site in a jiff using any number of site builders like Jekyll, Hugo, Middleman, or literally hundreds of others. You then can serve your static HTML website from Amazon S3, Github Pages, Netlify, or some paid hosting service, and set up a snazzy .com domain name too.

Not a web developer? Sucks to be you. The vast majority of the static site generator tools out there are run from the command line, powered by things you've never heard of like Node, Grunt, or Babel. So you reluctantly turn to Wordpress, Wix, or Squarespace where, if you decide you want your own custom .com domain name, you find out you have to pay a monthly subscription of at least $4, $5 or $12 respectively.

The static site renaissance has left you behind, dear ~~sucka~~ reader, the new hotness speeding off in the distance while you settle for what was hot in 2005. Dust off your Nickelback CDs, you'll need a soundtrack.

So What Would a Static Site Generator for the Rest of Us Like Like?

I'm glad you asked. I think it'd be a desktop app. Static site generators (or at least the ones I really like) typically build sites from a collection (or folder) of Markdown files. For example:

index.md
about.md
contact.md
faq.md

Since phones aren't the best for manipulating files and folders, I think a Mac/Windows/Linux app would be best to handle this. Depending on the type of site you want to make (a portfolio, a small business website, etc) you'll probably want to choose from a range of templates:

Personal_Site
Portfolio
Photo_Site
Restaurant
BnB
Yoga_Studio
Etc, etc...

After selecting your template, your folder of Markdown files is pre-populated, and you can replace the dummy content with your own. And in my perfect world, you also might see a config.txt file where the theme you just chose is declared (e.g. template="Restaurant". This file might also be a good place to declare or override other things like:

This configuration file would also be a great place to declare what you want your navigational menu structure to be. I like nested lists of links (where nested items become dropdown menus):

At this point in our hypothetical web building process, you might press the "build site" button, and all your markdown files are converted to a nice little collection of HTML files that you can then host from wherever you want. And for non-technical users, our hypothetical desktop app should have either FTP support (and documentation), or guidance to host to places like S3 or other commonly used hosting services.

Icing on the Cake

Other features that I'd include that I personally think would be nice to have.

Multimarkdown for tables and Footnotes (and Bigfoot.js for those sexy mouse-hover footnotes).
Table of Contents shortcode, sort of like Marked app and this fork of Strapdown.js have.

Site Generators Worthy of Mention

It's possible that there might already be a wonderful static site generator out that is accessible to non-technical users. If you know of one, let me know. But there are a few site generators that I do like, and I'll mention them here:

Poole: A python-based site generator that does much of what I've described above, and influenced a lot of my ideas here. Unfortunately, it is a command line tool which disqualifies it as being a site generator for non-technical users, I feel.
MKdocs: Similar to Poole, but this generator is aimed at making documentation pages.
Cactus: No longer maintained (to my knowledge), this Mac OSX app was created by a team that includes Koen Bok, the creator of Framer. It generated a little bit of buzz. It can still be downloaded from some online repositories like this one, though.

For my Bluebird Pocket Planner website, I used Poole, which I mentioned in the last section of this page. For the site you are reading right now, I use Pelican. ↩