Tag: Travel

Nagoya, Aichi, Japan

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Like my trip to Las Vegas, my recent time in Japan had three distinct parts: a city break in Nagoya, the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix, and a beach holiday in Okinawa. I’ll address each in a separate blog post over the coming weeks, beginning with the three days I spent amusing myself in the city.

So there I was, with three empty days before the Grand Prix to fill in a place the internet called “the most boring city in Japan”. I’d been to Nagoya before and seen the castle, so I needed to find things to do beyond the obvious (for the sake of brevity, I’ll also avoid rambling about my love for small but cool Japanese things like subway etiquette). Luckily, I’d done some research before leaving home, and had some actvities planned…

On Day One I decided to take a relaxed stroll and indulge my nerdy side. It’s no Akihabara, but in Nagoya’s Osu shopping district (and beyond) there are some video game shops that far exceed anything we have in the UK – Super Potato and Meikoya, for a start, along with games sections in bigger second-hand stores like Hard-Off. I made my way around these, stopping in the large department stores and Hisaya-Odori Garden in between, and after some consideration bought a Japanese copy of the Dead Rising PS4 remaster (which had no physical release in the UK) for about £12 at Book-Off.

Left to right: Super Potato and Hisaya-Odori Garden, Nagoya City Science Museum, Oasis 21 and izakaya food

I felt like I should do something just a little bit touristy on Day Two, and headed for Nagoya City Science Museum, home of the world’s largest planetarium. The place was crawling with schoolkids, and I can’t say I learnt much as the show and all the plaques were in Japanese, but it was worth it for the spectacle. For dinner, a friend took me to a traditional izakaya, where I ate a large amount of various delicious meats (I’m not entirely sure what they all were, just that I was told one of them was similar to haggis) with beer.

Day Three was a bit disjointed. I needed to move hotels in the morning, so I waited until the rush hour had died down (or so I thought!) and dragged my suitcase through the bustling subway. After dropping it off at my new hotel, I revisted some of the places I’d been in the last couple of days to buy some of the things I’d seen: a new raincoat from Muji, a few neat little Rollbahn notebooks from a shop called Smith, a very nice light jacket from a store called Hideaways, and some gifts for friends and family back home.

So my time in Nagoya wasn’t the most exciting period of my stay in Japan, but there was plenty to occupy my time – especially as I’m quite geeky and was keen to find some unique things to take home with me. And in amongst all that there was plenty of tasty food (everything local to Nagoya comes with miso) to keep me full and energised.

This is post one of three on my recent trip to Japan. The next one will cover the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka Circuit, and the final one will be on my stay on Okinawa’s main island.

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

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I’m home, I’ve shaken the jetlag, and I finally feel like I’ve recovered from the sensory overload that is Las Vegas. So as promised, here’s the first of three posts about my experiences in the USA…

Las Vegas is a lot. Too much, probably. You want desert but your main course is about twice as big as the ones at home so you have no space left. You want to go to bed, but the walk back to your hotel takes you through three different casinos. And even once you reach your resort, you have to navigate your way through endless clusters of slot machines with their blinking lights and happy jingles to reach your room. Simply put, the place is exhausting, and after a week I couldn’t wait to get away and back to my own space.

At its best, Vegas is a unique experience. Where else am I going to have a cocktail served to me by a robot or spend a night wandering between casinos, gambling a little at each? Somewhere in the middle, Vegas is a sweltering, impassable sea of tourists not unlike the parts of London I deliberately avoid. And at its worst, Vegas feels almost sinister – never more so than when you notice the small details and tactics that help the place to maintain its Disneyland-like facade and convince people to part with their cash.

A view of the Strip (no post-edits here – it really is that bright)

On balance, I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas. It’s certainly somewhere to say that you’ve been, and I picked up a few stories that I’m sure I’ll tell anyone who’s interested for a few years to come. But unless I decide to go back to Defcon (more on that in a future post), I think it’s definitely a one-time thing. I’m not sure I could take another week dodging the crowds and having my attention pulled in all directions 24/7.

Don’t worry, though, Americans – I’ll be back. I know the Strip isn’t representative of your country, and even then, one of the positives I can take from my time in Nevada is that all the locals I spoke to were very polite and friendly. But perhaps the biggest positive from my trip is that I managed to achieve something that few people do in Sin City: I walked away from the Las Vegas casinos’ slot machines with a $10 profit in my pocket.

This is post one of three on my recent trip to Las Vegas. The next one will cover the Black Hat USA conference, and the final entry will be on the hacker get-together Defcon.

Hacker Summer Camp 2019

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It’s time for something a bit different on my fledgling little blog, as soon I’ll be heading out to Las Vegas for Black Hat USA 2019 and Defcon 27 – two events that together have become known as Hacker Summer Camp. I’m super excited – I’ve never been to an event with anywhere near so many hackers and cyber security people in one place!

The venue is set to be just as interesting as the conferences. The two events will occupy no fewer than four hotels spanning the length of the Strip, giving me plenty of opportunity to explore Vegas between talks and meetings. I’ve never even been to the United States before, so I feel like I have a lot to see (feel free to leave tips in the comments).

Probably the Vegas equivalent of a stock image of the London Eye or Parliament, but YOLO

To cover Hacker Summer Camp, I’m planning on writing three blog posts: one on my general impressions of Las Vegas, one on the corporate-focused Black Hat USA, and one on the hacking Wild West that is Defcon. I imagine there’ll be a lot to squeeze in, so they might be slightly longer than usual, and they may go up while I’m in the States or when I get back, depending on free time and the level of connectivity I have out there.

I realise there’s also a possibility that you’re reading this after I handed you a card at one of the events. If so, welcome! Please go ahead and subscribe to the blog, leave a comment below to say hello, and follow me on Instagram and Twitter if you have them. I’d love to build a little network to discuss cyber security and share cool techy stuff!