Ishikawa Prefectural Government Antenna Shop

 Wednesday morning was another early class day for Jane. Over breakfast at the hotel, I started filling out our arrival information for Japan to expedite our time through immigration coming up. The Captcha was unnerving and was out topic of discussion. Rather than the typical ask to identify all photos containing bicycles, this one asked which objects shown were lighter than a cabbage. Options included AI-generated images of socks, dolphins, or cathode ray televisions. We discussed what type of ability we were now training into the AI, and how it would ultimately be used against us:

After Jane headed to class, I walked to the Singapore National Museum. The route went through the Fort Canning Tree Tunnel again, which already had a sizable line of folks lining up to take photos. The museum itself was among some nicely landscaped grounds and was a peaceful setting.

The last photo is of a sensory booth reserved for senior visitors, intended to reduce sensory stimulation and create a peaceful, nostalgic environment.

The museum was impressive. The core permanent exhibit, a history of Singapore, had a lot of notable and interesting info that I wasn’t aware of. There was a significant amount of detail, however there was one topic that was glossed over - Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in 1965. This was the event that created the modern independent Singapore, but it was sort of hand-waved with a “Malaysia and Singapore decided to split up over economic and political differences”. There must be more to the story, but it wasn’t covered here.

There was one additional temporary exhibit about Singapore’s geography and how it shaped its history, and in turn how Singapore has shaped its own geography through land reclamation efforts. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot.

Unfortunately those were the only two exhibits open - there were several galleries and exhibits being installed or renovated.

After that I travelled to souther part of the city with a vintage store I had set up an appointment for. They had told me they have some Strawberry Shortcake merchandise, so I hoped to find some to give to Mio as a birthday gift (since she is a Strawberry Shortcake fan). They had a thermos bottle and lunchbox in great shape, so I got those. It was a very dense and interesting store on the top floor of a light industrial complex.

Jane and I met up and after dropping off our stuff, we went next door to Takashimaya to shop for some additional things for Mio. While there, we got some boba tea. We also decided to try some of the super expensive fruit from Japan! They had cups of the same grapes, loose, for only $12, so we got one to try. Our assessment? Very grapey, definitely worth a premium over regular grapes, but not worth $148 a bunch.

This was out last night on Orchard Road, so we took a picture of the streetscape.