Life in the shoebox continues for the moment. Have plans to move into a proper apartment soon. Which I am looking forward to for a lot of different reasons. The share house has been fine, but with the corona situation I really do not want to be in a building with so many shared spaces. Share house is much simpler to manage though. Don’t have to worry about paying for utilities and such.

As Autumn gets closer, the heat has gotten less blistering. Few typhoons tossing some storms our way, but have been keeping a distance. It was reported that this year was the first time on record typhoons never hit Japan in July. While Kyushu (Japan’s southern island) has gotten slammed with multiple typhoons since, Tokyo has been relatively calm. After the heat and rain settles, I can wander around and take photos again. I think I will be much more excited to do so once I move to the new place. More places to explore.


Blue Skies
Blue Skies

Japanese seem to enjoy the seasonal limited edition flavors and snacks. Most are just okay, but it’s a lot of fun to try. Even if the flavor isn’t all that great. Starbucks almost always has something going on and gets a lot of press because of it. Here’s some random ones I felt the need to take a picture of in recent months.


"Tacos" flavor
"Tacos" flavor

Man, I miss real tacos. These had the mediocre “taco flavor” flavor.


Orange Vanilla Coke
Orange Vanilla Coke

This one was pretty good. I always enjoyed vanilla coke when I was younger. Seeing a spin on the flavor made me want to try it. Supposedly this is a popular combination from those coke “Freestyle” machines where you can select your own add-on flavors. They then turned that into a limited edition flavor.


Chupa Chups drink?
Chupa Chups drink?

This was the one that made me do a double take. I always enjoyed their suckers as a kid, but rarely ever had them. This was the first time I’ve seen the brand doing something else. Their brand seems to be around Japan a bit more than I saw in the US.


still learning to draw faces
still learning to draw faces

This one isn’t food, but one of my recent struggles with drawing faces. Slowly making small amounts of progress. I am looking forward to having a bit better space to do more paintings. It is a bit tedious at the share house. In order to get clean water or wash off my paint, I need to go to a different floor since my floor only has women only bathrooms.

As for writing, I passed up 223 days in a row (283 total on 750 words) and have written over 215,000 words. I am slowly progressing my rules for time travel. Spoiler: it’s more about specifying a category of time travel. I want to brainstorm short story ideas. Even bite sized short stories. I want to explore doing that more. Maybe a short story I can draw.