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Life Hack with stopover

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:57:30 -0700

As a frequent flyer I always have been wondering how useful this "stopover" thing is and how you can abuse it. Originally I was thinking that it's just to stay over 24 hours on the airports en route, so it's like stopping by Chicago for a day if you fly to Paris. Actually it is, but you can do more by abusing it.

The first thing that come to my mind is that when I fly from San Francisco to Japan and then to Taiwan to attend to a conference or hacking in Taipei city. If you book separately SFO-NRT and NRT-TPE like I always do, it's like $1400 + $500 in this season. However, if you book SFO-TPE on ANA and ask for a stopover in NRT (because the flight stops via NRT anyway), it's just $1400 + $100 (ANA charges $100 per stopover). You can stop by Tokyo as long as you want, up to 3 months.

Another advanced technique is to use stopover is to combine that with your mileage awards and purchase the air ticket issued in Taipei/Seoul. For instance, I can get the round-trip NRT-TPE economy award, valid for 1 year with 15,000 miles (ticket A). You can then book a flight TPE-HNL (via NRT) 1 year open, with stopover at NRT, for $850 (ticket B). Now you can do things like this (dates are made up randomly):

June 15: NRT -> TPE (A)
(tourism in Taipei city)
June 18: TPE -> HNL via NRT (B)
(relaxed in Honolulu for 4 days)
June 22: HNL -> NRT (B)
(4 months stop over at Narita. Maybe back and forth to San Francisco for business trip)
Oct 10: NRT -> TPE (B)
(another tourism in Taipei)
Oct 13: TPE -> NRT (A)

So you get two Taipei trips and one Hawaii trip for $850 and 15,000 miles (obviously not including fees for hotels). The point is that 1) Use your mileage award because it gives you 1 year valid ticket which is very expensive usually and 2) Buy tickets from Taiwan or Seoul because it's extra cheap with 1 year open dates.

And yes, I can do this while I go to Japan with my business/private trip (paid by the company, Yay). Maybe I'll try next time... This time the schedule is a bit tight so I'm thinking of going to somewhere in Japan. And actually flying to anywhere in Japan is $110 if you fly from USA, which is still a good deal as well.

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Light Song

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:37:59 -0700

初音ミクがオリジナル曲を歌ってくれました「Light Song」

Another masterpiece from livetune featuring 初音ミク the vocaloid. I love this.

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Mariah and Perfume

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:35:13 -0700

GAME(DVD付) 【初回限定盤】

Perfume

E=MC2

Mariah Carey

It might not be just a coincidence they're released on the same day. They're both great and I guess they make the best pop album for this year in JP and US. 6Aers can enjoy Perfume's one on my iTunes share if you're on the wireless network :)

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Perfume - Secret Secret

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:21:03 -0700

エスキモー pino CM

This videoclip by Perfume is so awesome. Can't wait for their new album next Wednesday.

Now I actually ordered the CD (the first compact disc I buy in this 5 years or so ...) from Amazon.co.jp! It comes with a live DVD for $45 including $20 shipping fee. Paid by my Amazon gift card so there was no payment at all though.

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Going to Paris

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:52:09 -0700

SFO - CDG via ORD

Thinking of going to Paris the weekend after the next (April 24-28). And here's the first candidate flight from Kayak.com. It's freaking cheap $670 deal so I'd love to take it, but it's 37 minute layover in ORD, switching aircrafts. Is that really possible? There are other flights connecting in Dulles and they have 1.5-2 hours layover, and will arrive at 7am in Paris (ugh).

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Teaser: new video conduit for Vox

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:13:02 -0700

Preview

Coming soon!

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Casio EX-F1 300fps movie

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:01:32 -0700

カシオEX-F1が超高速撮影ですごい件 [H.264]

Casio EX-F1 does 1200fps slow motion movie as you can see on this movie. It's a digital camera (not DSLR) but can also do 1080p/60fps or 720p/30fps HD video recording as well. Available with $999 in US stores. Hmm, i want it.

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Blu-ray pricing in Japan

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:50:22 -0700

First Code Geass Series to be Sold on Blu-ray in Japan - Anime News Network

http://www.animen...

Code Geass is one of my favoite Anime series currently on the air. This Sunday the 2nd season started and I was impressed by the astonishing HD video quality of it (though the anti-piracy message embedded in the opening was quite annoying and spoiled the episode). There was also an announcement of making the series available in Blu-ray.

Since Blu-ray region code is shared in USA/JPN it's a good movement, but the pricing is, as always, problematic. The Blu-ray version costs $70 per 3 episodes, so it's eventually $700 for a whole season. That's just simply ridiculous. Most of us can't afford that price. It's a mistake.

Bandai, I'd love you to make H264 720p DRM-free movie files available for downloads, and I'll pay $3/episodes or $70 for the season. You can do that with almost no cost, because P2P can solve the bandwidth problem, and you don't need to care about DRM because we can always pirate DRM-free version, and uploading copyrighted materials is illegal per Japanese law anyway, regardless of the files are DRMed or not.

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66666

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:07:03 -0700

Inbox

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The Starting Line at Slim's

nobody@vox.com(miyagawa) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:35:14 -0700

IMG_0510.JPG

Went to The Starting Line show last night at Slim's. I really love their songs "Up and Go", "Leaving", "Greg's Last Day" and "Best of Me" and they played them all! The club was really crowded and full of youngsters. Last.fm tells me that I was probably the oldest there :)

It was an amazing show anyway!

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