garion.geek.nz

April 16

A beef bowl except with a humongous slab of pork belly and two half-eggs resembling a smiley face

April 4

A map outlining the route for the cycleathon

go big bike '25

Two weeks from now, on Friday 18th April, I will be embarking on a 10 day journey, making my way down to Onomichi, and then crossing to Shikoku to make my way home - by bicycle. I've been planning this for absolutely yonks and the stars / weather / visa situation have finally aligned sufficiently for me to map it and book it. You can take a look at the full route to get a better sense of scale.

To be blunt: it's gonna be heckin' rough. I've been fairly dormant throughout winter, so I'm not exactly fit, and I'm going to be pushing ~100kms a day, with no major breaks. Thankfully my ride has an emergency "jesus take the hill" mode (i.e. it's an e-bike), but I'll be trying to stay on pedal power as much as possible. On the plus side, I should come out the other end of it in much better shape (or with broken knees.)

To add to my stress, I'm going to be streaming the whole thing! It's been a long while since I last ran a proper stream, but I've over-engineered a whole app to manage it this time - more on that in a future post - and I think I've nailed the setup. If you're interested in listening to me whine about my butt being sore you're extremely invited to check out the stream. I'll also pin a link to the stream here when I'm live each day. For NZ folks, you can expect streams to run from around midday til after dinner, depending on how early I manage to will myself out of the hotel bed each morning.

Wish me luck! Hope to see you in chat :D

March 20

Overlooking the main road in central Osaka, towards Shinsaibashi

March 7

A gyudon bowl with rare beef and various other delicious ingredients.

kyushu fest in osaka. this was made by my friend Aoi, a Kumamoto native. sublime.

Looking down at a city side street in central Osaka from the 3rd floor. Neon signage and a very haphazard wiring job on a power pole are visible.

February 17

A tiny dish of lamb chops (well, a lamb chop, in tiny pieces) with spices and a bed of pesto.

still alive. still eatin’ good.

January 7

A bowl of ramen stacked with chashu and tempura
Main tower of Kumamoto Castle, set against a perfect blue sky in mid-afternoon winter

First domestic destination of 2025: Kyushu! This is the main tower of Kumamoto Castle, and I gotta say, this feels like peak castle to me. It suffered massive damage in an earthquake in 2016, but engineers have pulled off an incredible restoration, and the whole tour experience is the best I’ve seen. (The rest of the complex is in much worse shape still - there’s another ~25 years worth of repairs planned.)

December 25

Garion posing in a Santa hat with all the regulars at Bonchi

murr chrumbass everybody

December 2

Walking across Hoshi no Buranko in north-eastern Osaka
😴