Wifi services disrupted throughout Japan!

I am beyond frustrated!! Last year I joined Softbank to get “pocket wifi” which is mobile wifi (see the picture above). This little thing can support 10 gadgets at one time and it has been amazing….until a few days ago.  I woke up the other day, turned on my computer and then turned on my little wifi gadget. Nothing. It didn’t work. My husband spent an hour on the phone with someone at Softbank fiddling with things on the computer. Sometimes it looked like it connected but it wasn’t really connected.  Very strange since it has worked perfectly for more than a year.  I went to work which is in the same city and it worked absolutely fine when I used it on my laptop there. But that night at home, nada…nothing…zip! So, the next day we phoned the company again to complain. While my husband was waiting to talk to someone, he checked twitter and sure enough people throughout Japan were complaining. Still it seemed that no one at Softbank knew what was going on.  I was complaining to my boss about it and he said that there had been nothing in the news about it.

I went home last night and my husband said it had been in the news. Apparently, there is a Broadcasting company called “BS” (I know….WTH kind of name is that?) and they are making a new digital channel and it has completely disrupted all the wifi in Japan. Sometimes I can use it and sometimes I can’t.  Right now, I’m typing this in Microsoft Word instead of directly onto blogspot like I normally do as I’m too afraid of losing my wifi and therefore losing the post. I can’t believe it is ok for 1 company to be able to completely disrupt all the wifi in Japan because it isn’t just Softbank that is having trouble. Emobile and AU customers are also complaining. You would think that since they aren’t able to fulfill their end of a contract that we would be able to get out of it (all contracts here are 2 years) but apparently the contract we signed (which I can’t read so hubby signed it as it is paid via his credit card) says that they don’t guarantee service just that they will do their best. WTF?

So….I guess we will have to wait and see but this is absolute crap in my opinion. I can’t run my business without the Internet. Something will have to change or what will happen to wifi in Japan?

I'm in love with a Kombu snack!

Recently, I've been looking to get my iodine, iron,  vitamins and minerals from natural sources. So I looked into seaweed knowing it is high in iodine. You might think that because I'm in Japan I eat a lot of it....I don't. I hardly eat  it because I'm not crazy about the way most of it is prepared. Yes, I sometimes make dashi (soup base) with dried kombu but really....not that often. And yes, I eat maki sushi, but again, not that often.

About 2 weeks ago when we were at the supermarket we found a kombu (seaweed) and sesame seed snack. I bought it and loved it!  It is crunchy, slightly sweet and salty....absolutely delicious!  But, it was a very small pack and we wanted to find more so we looked on line.  The first thing we noticed is that much of it is made with sugar substitutes which I avoid for many reasons. We finally found one that is made without the fake stuff so we ordered it from a small company in Hokkaido.   It arrived and wow!  It is so delicious!!   Now the challenge will be to eat just a small amount a day cause this stuff is so delicious that it would be easy to just snack on it like popcorn!

My sushi ring was featured on Cnn.com!

Last week I was contacted by a writer for cnn.com. She was doing an article about sushi and crafts and the article came out today!  My ring is the 3rd picture. I was a bit bummed when I noticed they spelled my name wrong and there are  no links to the items they feature so a few of us that were featured put the links in the comment section.

http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2012/02/08/sushi-feeds-a-passion-for-crafting/?hpt=ea_r5

It's 11:30 pm so of course I'm outside with my hair dryer!

I can't believe it is already February!!  Speaking of February....it is cold here. Really cold here. It's -2 degrees Celsius which might not sound cold for those of you from Canada and other cold places but whatever the temperature is outside is the temperature inside!!!  Which means when I go to take a bath....I'm naked in -2 degrees and when I go to bed...my bedroom is -2 degrees. There is no central heat in my part of Japan even though it is cold enough to snow.

Which brings me to the title of this blog post.  At about 11pm I decided to wash the dishes and so I turned on the hot water ....only there wasn't any. I turned on the cold water-no problem. I checked to see if the gas was working and again, no problem. So I knew the hot water pipe was frozen.  So I got out my trusty blow dryer, plugged it into the convenient outside plug and started to try to heat up the pipe. My neighbour apparently didn't have this problem as he was taking a hot shower. But I'm sure he wondered what the noise was because he peeked outside to see what was going on. I hope he has a hair dryer cause chances are if he doesn't leave the his hot water tap slightly running tonight, it will be frozen tomorrow.

The one good thing about the bathroom being this cold....it makes sinking into the big Japanese tub filled with hot water an absolute delight!!