Random photos of stations I have visited

[kuro68000]

     

 

Dinner and anti-pidgeon propaganda.

[Gunzel]

The fans are for tea. They push the warmer air 4-6m up down to the ground to minimise frost. 
 

Which shop was the Nikon scanner in? 
 

Kanazawa is very busy, we stayed in Shin-Takaoka, the hotel is about 40m from the station entrance. We have a rail pass so the commute cost for us was negligible. Funnily enough I didn’t get to the HARD OFF in Takaoka. 

[kuro68000]

18 minutes ago, Gunzel said:

Which shop was the Nikon scanner in?

 

Near Shin-Sayama Station.

[Kingmeow]

2 hours ago, kuro68000 said:

 

 

A year ago I'd have bought this, but I have scanned all my photos now. It's a scanner for slides and film, with incredibly high quality.

 

That's an amazing price for that Nikon Coolscan 4000, assuming that it works and not "As-Is".  I have the baby brother, the Coolscan IV.  Great machine.

[Gunzel]

I reckon you could do all three stores in Kanazawa from Tokyo in a day by public transport fairly easily, and you even get a chance to travel on the Hokuriku Railway. I’ve uploaded some albums to Flickr, perhaps that can help your decision. 
 

HARD OFF Kanazawa Moroe

HARD OFF Kanazawa Terachi

HARD OFF Kanazawa Nonoichi

HARD OFF Toyama Toyota

 

The Coolscan is marked as-is on the ticket, but if you ask you’d be able to use the test bench in the store to plug it in, and if you had a laptop you could probably try it out. I have a few Minolta Dimage 5400’s and I’d be interested in comparing them. Especially as the holders they use are getting rarer. 

Edited December 24, 2024 by Gunzel
Updated links to albums and removed note about upload in progress

[kuro68000]

@Gunzel indeed it is only 3 hours on the Shinkansen. I might do it, when the weather improves.

 

I want to go to Ashikaga Flower Park. They have illuminations that I saw some posters for. I might head up there tomorrow. Need to time it so I can go in the evening. There is one Hard Off in Utsunomiya that I haven't been to, but the other ones there were pretty mediocre so I'm not prioritizing it. There are more to the west. Couldn't find a good hotel there or I'd think about staying and looping back round later, but it's not all that far from Asakusa really so I might as well just come back in the evening. Doesn't really matter if I get back at 11 PM.

 

Thanks for the photos. Those look like some great Hard Offs, well worth the effort to visit! The Mac LC II is tempting. Only 4kg and a classic model. I was watching some 68k Mac laptops on Yahoo Auctions but they aren't cheap, and are an absolute pain to work on. Lots of interesting arcade stuff too. I used to have a few arcade PCBs but I'm down to just Midnight Resistance now, which I will never ever sell.

 

Random aside: The lead story on NHK's flagship News Watch 9 today is a bear in someone's living room, taking advantage of the kotatsu.

 

Anyway, today was a bit mixed. More fun with buses, although I think it was Google Map's fault. Most bus stops are in the wrong place and sometimes by quite a distance. Sometimes it just has old data. Apparently most of the bus companies aren't all bothered about keeping it up to date.

 

 

Started with a non-Hard Off used goods store in Hatogeya. Found this random PCB from some Yamaha product. I'll harvest those switches with built in LEDs and find some project for them.

 

 

Been looking for a tape drive for a while. Maybe a cheap LTO6 one, but really I want an LTO8 or at least 7. LTO is backwards compatible two generations. It will write the previous generation, and read the previous two generations, so I could use these tapes. The price wasn't brilliant for LTO5, but they did have plenty of them. The asterisk by the capacity is because that is compressed, real capacity is 1.5TB.

 

 

Finally found one. Didn't get it because it says that the select button is a bit iffy, probably just needs cleaning, but it's a backup in case I don't find any other better ones. From memory there were lots in Nagoya.

 

 

This seat at Soka Station has a note apologizing for the leak above it.

[kuro68000]

  

 

Here's something very Japanese - a mini scanner for business cards. Also an interesting printer.

 

     

 

Minami-Sakurai.

 

[Gunzel]

I updated the links above with the other Kanazawa store and the one I went to in Toyama. 
 

I’ve also added a bunch of photos to the album for HARD OFF PC Niigata Koshin which I went to last year. Still some great retro PC stuff there. 
 

I love the note above the leak!

[kuro68000]

My plan is to go somewhere at the weekend, but I'm not sure where. Depends on the weather and if I can find a cheap car rental.

 

I'm in Saitama today and was reminded how infrequent even the trains are in rural parts. The Hard Off here is good though. Seems like the less accessible it is, often the better the stuff. Like those shops in JRPG games on level 92 of the dungeon that for some reason have all the best gear.

 

One sad thing though, a lot of branches are no longer accepting Laserdiscs.

 

Anyway walking back to the station I saw some cats so started fussing over a lovely white one. I've just adopted a stray back home in fact. A few minutes later an old woman arrives and says hello, and asks if I like cats. I ask her about them and she says they are strays, and the one I'm petting is going to be neutered tomorrow but it's very expensive. I've heard this one before, although her ear wasn't clipped so she probably did need to go to the vet. Well it's for a cat and I do have a reputation. It's well known among the feline community that I'm a friend of cats and always good for a massage, so I gave her a few yen and asked her to look after my new friend.

[cteno4]

Well I spent my Xmas eve trolling the last 4 years of this topic to pull modeling idea shots! Quite fun and tons of images tucked away! I pull ed 80 unique and wonderful manhole cover pictures!

 

thanks @kuro68000!

 

cheer,

 

jeff

[kuro68000]

 

I think I saw this last year... It's tempting but I'm holding out for a 680x0 based one.

 

 

Bought this for 550 yen. It might not work on modern Windows but I've occasionally thought it would be handy to have a hand scanner, so I'll give it a try. Maybe I can scan the manual and other bits to save taking them back with me, or just chuck them... I only usually keep stuff if there isn't a PDF copy or download of the software, but Panasonic are usually good for that sort of thing.

 

  

 

Kazo Station.

[kuro68000]

  

 

Tatebayashi Station. They have an interesting set-up where platforms 3 and 4 are just different ends of the same island.

 

  

 

Nishi-Koizumi Station and nearby park.

[kuro68000]

 

Had one of these as a kid so could not resist.

 

  

 

 

 

Some cats I met. They seem to have come to the nearby park and now the lady you can hear in the second video is feeding them.

 

     

 

Some more shots of the station, including the abandoned platform. There seems to be a large foreign community here, with lots of shops and restaurants serving Brazilian food.

[kuro68000]

 

I have a video of the walk from here to Hard Off. I wish I had made one of the walk from Hard Off to Sano Station as well, because even though it was dark it was good. The gimbal was a bit heavy at that point and I knew I would be taking a lot more photos later too, so I held off. Video uploading...

 

     

 

Some nice old oscilloscopes, like I used back at college. I'm debating if I should grab stuff like that joystick. It's an absolute bargain and would be a great one to do a conversion on. But also, limited space, maybe needs to be posted... Fantastic condition and practically giving it away.

 

I nearly got the CD player too. It's actually a Video CD player. My friend asked me about CD players so I started taking notice of them, and VCD ones are rare. It wasn't in terrible shape but there was battery leakage.

 

Some Hard Offs have some idol videos, I don't know what you call them exactly. Ladies whose main talent is looking good in a bikini. Occasionally they have some porn hidden away in a corner somewhere too. Well, this one had an entire room full of porn, with a curtain and everything.

 

 

One scene while walking to the station. I could have taken many more, or made the effort to get the manual exposure right on this one, but it's cold up in Saitama.

[kuro68000]

     

 

Another friend.

 

     

 

Sano Station.

[kuro68000]

              

[kuro68000]

     

[kuro68000]

And finally on to Ashikaga Flower Park...

 

           

[kuro68000]

           

[kuro68000]

           

[kuro68000]

            

 

More photos and some videos to follow...

[kuro68000]

Buses are just awful.

[kuro68000]

I forgot where I was with videos so apologies if any of these are repeats...

 

 

 

 

Back to the lights...

 

     

 

I have to say, I admire these young ladies and their dedication to the look. I was in jeans and freezing so I can only imagine the sacrifices they were making.

[kuro68000]

        

[kuro68000]