Minirolls Musings

Exploring Sendai

The day started with what can only be described as a character-building experience: Aimi driving us down the mountain from Zao Onsen towards Shibata. Now, I trust my wife with many things in life, but hurtling down narrow mountain roads with sheer drops and enthusiastic cornering is… an experience. I spent most of the journey alternating between admiring the scenery and mentally preparing my will. This little K-car is not built for mountain roads, or enthusiastic Europeans.

1000 Steps & Samurai House

Turns out that Aimi insulted her more than we first thought…

The Only Westerners

This morning we parted ways. If you didn’t know us, you’d think we had a massive fight as we each shot towards opposite ends of the country at over 185mph.

Bullet train, baby!

Studio Ghibli Museum

Kai, Laura and Nath met us after a tasty breakfast sandwich and took us to a makers market they found on the way. Here, a lovely lady tried to convince me to live life without pants. Her handmade underwear would make me strong like Samurai…

I passed

Big Boobed Bored Bird

Returning to Japan, there are some things we have already done that we want to do again, like TeamLab Planets, and other things we didn’t do that we wish we had, like the Sky Tree.

Small Japanese Reunion

The hostel WiFi password is “checkout10am”, just in case you didn’t know. I made sure to be out on time, but still feeling a bit sluggish, I luxuriated in a lie-in. I had been up late chatting to a French girl called Lena and a Canadian lad called Doug about their travels. While waiting for my laundry to dry, they gave me the name of a good sushi restaurant for a date night.

Akihabara Snooping

The £16-a-night hostel is amazing. For the money, you really cannot ask for more.

Wednesday Tokyo Whoopers

I seem to have misplaced a day, so I’ve got to count a 2-hour nap as a turn of the day.

On Standby

Waking up seeing the wheels of an A380 coming at you is a little disconcerting, to say the least.

DOACC: Skylights

Diary of a camper conversion

I’ve got the best brother. While I was in a work training course, he was taking on one of the most stressful jobs I had been putting off.

Installing skylights means cutting whopping great big holes in your nice new, clean, smooth and watertight roof. I was dreading it because I’ve been so many examples online where people have installed them and then after the build is complete, they find water running down inside their van walls.

That would be the worst thing so I’m grateful he took this on and completed the first one for me. And it looks great! Huge thick sealant bead around the inside and it’s fitting nice and flush.

However… When it hinges up to open, the glass hits the roof, so it doesn’t fully open 90 deg, meaning it doesn’t stay open by itself. This is a bit of a disappointment as this was a feature I was looking forward to. But thinking about it, I probably wouldn’t leave a huge glass panel balanced up there unattended, so I would probably have made a stay for it anyway at some point.

The only other downside to this is that if you push it to hard, it’s going to lever up the whole skylight and break the sealant… But we will conveniently ignore this blatant design flaw and move on!

The second skylight was left for me to have a stab at. Cutting huge holes, then jig sawing around the carefully drawn line. Deburring and painting the edge to prevent corrosion. And finally, squeezing out half a Sikaflex tube of sealant to glue it in place.

Now we really for it to cure, and I check it for leaks when it next rains.