I got a new super minimalist theme and I no longer have scroll bars at 1024×768 so its good for me.

Just realized that my blog theme is lame. I’m looking at it at 1024×768 on an old laptop and I see all the wasted space.

It’s changing…

Do you love liquor?

Originally uploaded by gabrielsond.

I’ve lived quite a few places in my life so far. I have been working on this map for a while now, trying to remember as many places as I could. I have intentionally left a few places off this map for privacy, including my current address, but this is 90% complete.

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GourmetCity
I’m pretty sure this grocery store was called something else when I lived there. It was a nice market, although a little more expensive than Super Tamade, and they had a better selection of beer.

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Post Office
Self-explanatory

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Dog Building (わんわん)
I love this building. I don’t actually know what the whole building was used for, I think they had kennel services. The main floor had a large area where dogs could meet and each other and play and where people could watch.

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Entrance To Dotonbori
Dotonbori (Doutonbori/道頓堀) is a pretty famous street in Japan, particularily Osaka. It’s only a couple blocks from where I lived and you could see the neon crab from my balcony at night.

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Photography Shop Gone
Warning: This post will not stand the test of time.
As of August 2008, you would see a construction site on this corner that led from a main street to the street connecting to where I lived. This corner used to have a two story building on it with a little photo/camera shop at street level. The store was old and out dated. Japanese electronics shops are flashy and show all the latest models of cameras, etc. but this store was dusty, dark, and only had some somewhat old pamphlets for digital SLRs.

I needed to get some ID photos taken for something so we decided to try to support a neighbourhood store but the shop owner wanted 3000 yen for 2 photos when I could get them done at a photo booth for no more than 1000 yen. I knew his business was not long for the world in an ever changing Shimanouchi.

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Secret 7-11
I often stopped at this 7-11 on my way to school to pick up ice coffee and curry croquette. This 7-11 is kind of hidden in a shadowy part of the hotel, although they do have signs on the street to direct people.

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Korean Consulate
This was my goal on my first trip to Japan, which lasted less than 8 hours.

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I already made a couple of posts of places in Osaka on Google Maps’ Street View:

• My Japanese Language School (EHLE) On Google Maps
• My Flat In Osaka On Google Maps Street View (Kind Of…)

And there will likely be more because I dig maps and I want to mark places that I remember before I forget.

Here are a few other places near where I used to live:

Super Tamade
We bought almost all of our groceries from this store. I could hop on my bike, go to the store, and be back in under 10 minutes. It was very, very convenient.

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This is the “mansion” that my sister-in-law lived in; very nice building and also very pricey!

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Central Osaka Baptist Church
This is the church that my wife went to and where we taught English together.

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My wife and I translated the menu for this Chinese restaurant from Japanese & Korean to English. The previous English menu was unusable

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The Street View on Google Maps Japan does not go down the street where I lived in Osaka, but you can still see the top of the building from a corner nearby. Since I lived on the top floor (10th) I count this as being visible It the tall brown building in the middle:

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Here are some photos from the flat:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I just found out that Google Maps Japan has Street View and has a nice selection of streets in Osaka that I remember well. This is the Japanese language school that I attended for a while in 2005.

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I often bought breakfast/lunch from this convenience store. Mmm, prepackaged curry croquette.

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My wife and I put up an ad to rent our condo (downtown Saskatoon) and we got 4 serious responses via email in under 2 hours. I didn’t put the phone number because I figure anyone who is looking at kijiji is likely to just email anyway and I thought it would help weed out the people who aren’t very serious. Very impressive for $0.

Edit: I should also note that there were a few ads for units in the same building already on Kijiji but they didn’t have good photos or any photos and they didn’t use very good language to attract people to the unit.