== Bernie's brain dump as of April 2009 ==
+=== April 30th: Departure ===
+
+==== My father's photos ====
+
+Throughout our journey, my father also took [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/From_Alberto|plenty of shots]]
+with his video camera.
+
+==== How to spend 8 hours in Paris ====
+
+Our flight from Narita arrived at Charles de Gaulle at 4AM, and the connecting
+flight to Florence was at 1PM. Could we spend all this time sitting in the terminal?
+
+No way! My camera's battery was gone, but my father took some photos of [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/From_Alberto/Paris]].
+
+For the first time in my life, I had a really bad impression of Paris. Coming from Tokyo,
+any place would seem very dirty, but in this case the garbage was real, abundant,
+and smelled intensely of alcohol, urine and vomit. Perhaps April 30th was a special "drunk men day"?
+
+{{japan_2009/From_Alberto/Paris/00216.jpg|maxwidth=800}}
+
+==== GEEK UPDATE: A productive flight ====
+
+On the flight back to Europe, I spent some time hacking on [[GeekiGeeki]] to add little goodies such as
+
+ * a grid view for photos;
+ * automatic generation of human-readable link tags from wiki URLs;
+ * a common parser for argument lists such as "foo|bar=1|baz=3";
+ * the ability to specify css style for links and inline objects, which I'm using to produce
+ floating thumbnails on the side of pages without resorting to HTML
+
+These new features will make my wiki markup even lighter than before.
+Moreover, these additions actually resulted in further //simplification//
+of the codebase rather than code bloat. Way to go!
+
+{{{
+git diff --stat v3.0..HEAD geekigeeki.py
+geekigeeki.py | 709 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------------------------
+1 files changed, 352 insertions(+), 357 deletions(-)
+}}}
+
+If you notice any regressions in the output, please report them to me.
+I'm hoping to release 4.0 soon.
+
+Tags: [[tags/stuff_that_matters]] [[tags/!bloat]] [[tags/as_simple_as_possible]] [[tags/but_no_simpler]]
+
+
+==== Last day in Tokyo ====
+
+We gathered all our left energies for a //tour de force// of a bunch of touristic
+locations highly recommended in our guide:
+
+ * The [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Tokyo_Again/Edo_Museum]], along with a wonderful
+ temporary special exhibition of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka]].
+ * The [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Tokyo_Again/Ameyoko]] markets
+ * The [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Tokyo_Again/Ueno_Zoo]]
+ * The Narita airport :-(
+
+=== April 29th: Back to Tokyo ===
+
+==== Hostel ====
+
+After one last tour of the [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko/town]], we left from Nikko in
+with a low-cost private line (2h40, but only 1100 Yen all the way to Asakusa).
+
+We had just one evening and half of the next day to spend in Tokyo, so we quickly dropped
+our luggage to the [[http://www.tokyo-ih.jp/en/index.html|Tokyo International Youth Hostel]],
+a sort of nazi camp with a great view on the 18th floor of a high-rise building in Iidabashi.
+
+==== Akihabara ====
+
+Because there was a strict curfew at 11PM, we had to take the metro during the rush
+hour ([[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Tokyo_Again/metro|photos and videos]]) to reach
+the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara|Electric Town]] ([[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Tokyo_Again/Akihabara|photos]]).
+
=== April 28th ===
-The [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko|first batch of photos from Nikko]] are now online.
+==== Guided tour ====
+
+{{Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko/waterfalls_tour/00038.jpg|maxwidth=640|class=thumbright|The Yutaki Waterfalls}}
+
+Pictures of our day-long [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko/waterfalls_tour]] are now online.
+Our friendly guide, the Buddhist monk whose name I forgot, answered many of our pending questions
+about Japanese traditions and religion. Hiking through these sacred mountains and woods was an
+enjoyable experience.
+
+TODO: assemble a good video from all the scenes I took along the way
+
+==== Nikko Temple Area ====
+In the afternoon, we went to visit the [[Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko/world_heritage_site]].
+One would expect to grow bored of Shinto and Buddhist temples after seeing many of them
+all over Japan, but visiting the Nikko temple area was once again an extraordinary experience.
+And I could finally spot a few [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miko]]s too!
+
+{{Pictures/vacation/japan_2009/Nikko/world_heritage_site/00096.jpg|maxwidth=640}}
=== April 27th ===
==== Afternoon: travel to Nikko ====
Nikko is in an adjacent valley east of Nagano on the Japanese alps. Unfortunately, no train lines
-and busses connect them directly, so we had to take an expensive -- yet very fast -- Shinkansen
-detour all the way down to Saitama and then up again.
+and buses connect them directly, so we had to take an expensive -- yet very fast -- Shinkansen
+detour all the way down to Saitama and then northbound again.
Once at the station, we immediately realized it was a good deal, after all.
This mountain town overflows with temples, world heritage sites and statues of Buddah
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