Oh by the way also at the arcade there was an AMAZING ddr successor called "Dancerush Stardom". Instead of the nine plates there's just basically a giant touchscreen, it has depth because it's clear with an array of flashy lights underneath, it richly combines elements from multiple rhythm game concepts (not clear from the video but it often has you drop your foot and slide it left or right), some tracks assume two people on the plate dancing around each other(!)

@spookysquid playing:

Extremely incredibly good: Waking up with the sun

IMO not so good: the sun in Osaka, Japan at the end of October raises at 6 AM and sets at like 4:30 or something

Japan doesn't have daylight savings time, but of course daylight savings time would make this problem literally worse. Sometimes I actually kinda wish the world had daylight savings time in reverse

EDIT: Wait. DST is in the *summer*. Is what I really want for DST to be year-round?

I think as a good socialist I'm not supposed to get excited about "oh look at all these nice consumer products"

But

Wow I really do like Japan's consumer products!!

The temporary deodorant and hand moisturizer I picked up here. I like them more than my regular brands

I like the convenience store onigiri. It fills a hole in my day to day life in North America

Arcades are (in Osaka?) relatively common, relatively cheap, and have games I actually want to play

The map claimed on the grounds the presence of a "Labyrinthian Fortress". We followed the map and found a large building there but there was a $9 entry fee, to see an exhibit about uniform fashion, and no apparent labyrinth. We did find this mysterious Object outside.

Perhaps if you go to the fashion exhibit, and become sufficiently lost within it, the labyrinth will Reveal itself

Truchet tiles spotted

They did this cool thing where there was one area of the walkway tiles with the chaotic/aperiodic Truchet tiles, and another area tiled with one repeating tile that formed a complete unbroken picture with the Truchet tiles but were themselves totally regular, so it was like this rough border with order on one side and chaos on the other

This is still in the park around the Tower of the Sun. Every individual little part of this place had so much care and thought put in it

Note: If you like the posts above from my visit to the Tower of the Sun, you may also like Miguel's thread on Bluesky with his own photos from the day. Miguel paid extra to be allowed to take photos inside of the Tower (above described as "Him") above the first floor (they appear to be very concerned about people dropping their cameras and make you rent a lanyard) and so got some shots I was not able to

https://bsky.app/profile/spookysquid.bsky.social/post/3l7pbc3vtlt26

I concluded my day by making… making what what may have been a very unwise purchase.

Or maybe it will turn out to have be the wisest purchases I have ever made. It is too early to tell

I just… I saw them, I was getting something at the pharmacy by the subway station and I saw them, and I thought "do I want one of these?" and suddenly the thought hit me, a lightning bolt of absolute certainty, that no, no what I want is *four of them*.

They are posable.