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    the founding of nintendo

    Sakoku. (鎖国, “closed country”) was the isolationist foreign policy of the Japanese Tokugawa shogunate (aka Bakufu[1]

    wikpedia

    In the mid-16th century, Portuguese traders introduced Spanish-style 48-card decks to Japan. Almost immediately, the Japanese started making their own decks, called karuta (derived from “carta”, card).

    During sakoku, the western-style playing cards were banned, and so were the karuta. People liked playing cards, though. They’re portable and extremely versatile. A small item that can fit in your pocket and go with you anywhere, and holds within it the potential of any number of games.

    Japanese manufacturers created new card types that concealed their Portuguese origins.

    mekuri karuta. the Komatsufuda set.

    These were banned too.

    They gave it a few more tries: Karuta

    The 19th century saw the creation of hanafuda (“flower card”) decks. Instead of 4 suits each with 12 cards, like the Portuguese decks (which had no 10s!), Hanafuda decks have 12 suits (12 months!) each with 4 cards. Once they got popular for gambling they were banned too, in 1816.

    brightly coloured hanafuda cards spread out in a jumble

    some hanafuda cards

    aren’t they beautiful?

    Sakoku ended in 1853 when the American kurofune (Black Ships) commanded by Matthew Perry arrived with guns and forced the Shogun to sign the “Treaty of Peace and Amity”. The UK signed the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty at the end of 1854.

    Five years later, Fusajirō Yamauchi (山内 房治郎, Yamauchi Fusajirō) was born! Fusajiro would grow up to be an artist and entrepreneur.

    On 23 September 1889, Fusajiro opened a shop called Nintendo Koppai, selling hand-painted hanafuda cards crafted from the bark of mulberry and mitsu-mata trees. They were among the only cards it was legal to sell, and they got very popular very fast. Fusajiro had to hire some more artists to help keep up with demand.

    When the cards became the favoured brand of the Yakuza, Fusajiro had to create a system for mass producing them. The gamblers opened a new deck for every game.

    Once Western cards were legal again, Nintendo started making those too. Nintendo landed a deal with the tobacco monopoly JT to sell Nintendo cards in JT’s cigarette stores, and that's when they really started making money.

    1. under which, for a period of 214 years, relations and trade between Japan and other countries were severely limited, nearly all foreign nationals were barred from entering Japan and common Japanese people were kept from leaving the country ↩︎

    British Summer Time GMT+1

    complete and utter lack of oomph

    the tremendous pain and emotional exhaustion is one thing. tight, pulsing pain at the base of my skull; crying because half of a cherry tomato fell out of the toasted sandwich i was making for my partner; a curdling feeling in my plasma; not knowing if i’m upsetting people because my sense of their feelings has been cut off. those are, like, intense and present.

    ever-surprising though is the complete and utter lack of ümph. like, do you ever… you know when you… it’s like inside you you have a match hanging, bobbing against a spinning disk of coarse sandpaper and at some point it bobs enough that the match lights…. like, you have an idea like “i’d like to make a cup of coffee” and you put it in layaway until you have a spark of energy and you grab that and jump up and go do. a small spike in your fluctuating will power that’s enough to ignite you. and your inertia is no longer such that you can’t start, but such that you keep going.

    well that’s missing.

    i have been, since 8am, trying to take my half a hormone (none yesterday) and make coffee and gashouse eggs. or even just any one of those things. but i can’t get up. i can’t actually move. and if i put things on layaway they never get picked up. i’m going to have to synthesise willpower from something else. maybe i can imagine that a large rodent has been dropped on me, or that the house is burning down. i think if the house was burning down i might still just lie here. maybe if i just,,, lean to the left and roll off the sofa onto the floor then the jolt will shake something loose

    maybe i could order some coffee to be delivered, then hopefully my pathological desire to never be an inconvenience to anyone will mean i get up to get the coffee from the hallway so none of the neighbours have to be reminded that i exist

    if only abe was awake asking for eggs, then i could use that as fuel. okay, i’m going to try again. i’ll close the laptop and i’ll synthesize willpower out of something. maybe if i throw my vape onto the laundry basket then eventually the power of nicotine addiction will overcome the frozen executive function

    — chee (hi@chee.party) 2020-06-11

    British Summer Time GMT+1

    reduced capacity

    i’m having a really hard time atm

    hormones postage has been delayed and i’m running out, down from 6mg a day to 1mg every 2 days, and will soon (3 days) be on 0mg a day

    it’s better to have a little every couple days to suddenly have 0 for a week

    i learnt that in the winter we stayed near the ice skating rink

    my skin feels like it’s being scraped off from the inside with tiny forks

    and i’m tired and exhausted and can’t think straight or do anything right

    they were ordered in April, and they left Vanuatu on 11th May on a fiji airlines cargo plane

    apparently Royal Mail is taking a long time to process international orders

    i tried to make a gluten free hollandaise sauce for breakfast, but instead i made a pot of yellow brains. that was about 100 times fancier a breakfast than i should have tried. i tipped the pot into the trash and somehow missed the bag and had to pick it all out of the sink with a wooden spoon

    the pharmacy made an agreement with Vanuatu Post to pay an extra fee so they can ship via a fiji airlines cargo aeroplane, it’s some of the only mail going out of Vanuatu

    they aren’t passing these extra shipping costs onto the customer, which is great of them

    but they’ve said that if you’re in the United Kingdom (i’m in the United Kingdom) an order might take 4-8 weeks to arrive.

    some people started receiving their May 11th orders on 28th May

    but it’s up to luck really, about how good the route is for the package through Royal Mail to your home

    and you don’t get shipping updates, because it’s on these cargo aeroplanes, not ordinary mail

    i had a shower today

    i’m going to shower every day, get smooth and clean, and accomplish 1 (ONE) thing every day, and eat 3 meals a day, and sleep before midnight

    and when i wake up i’ll drink a glass of water, fizzied up with 2 alka-seltzer and a berocca

    i will be strong girl

    British Summer Time GMT+1

    a bought a compact cassette recorder.

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    the little box for the Sanyo TRC-1148 Compact Cassette Recorder

    it’s a Sanyo TRC-1148.

    features:

    • built-in speaker
    • built-in mic
    • mic port (jack)
    • ear port (jack)
    • voice-activated recording (you can arm the tape to record and have it not start rolling until it hears a loud enough sound)
    • a 3-digit tape counter

    tape is warm

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    a tape of circus music “MUSIC FROM UNDER THE BIG TOP - The Circus All-Stars”. there is washi tape over the write-protect holes.

    the seller didn’t mention there was circus music inside

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    the 3-digit tape counter reads 978

    it’s a great album. if you wind to the end of the first side and reset the tape counter, then rewind until the counter reads 978, there is about 54 seconds of blank tape.

    i’ve made some music with the tape recorder and the OP-1

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    the tape recorder and the op-1 (and the pocket operator k.o. and the a notebook and a pen and some gay headphones)

    it’s good

    — chee (hi@chee.party) 2020-05-10

    British Summer Time GMT+1

    dvd

    i remember this man who worked in the hardware store who had a scar that some people said was a lobotomy scar he liked me, he was not very smart he sold pirated DVDs and he had a folded up list of them in his pocket his friend made them, and he sold them for his friend i had a fast internet connection at home, i didn’t need pirated DVDs i don’t think i even had a DVD player but i’d buy them sometimes he’d come up to the trade desk, where i worked, and he’d say “i have new movies” and i remember one time very vivid, he came and he said “there’s a new one called.. ‘no country few(???) old men’ or something” and he kept saying it: ’no country’ then he’d pause and say ’few?’ then he’d pause and say ’old men or something’ he took the list out of his chest pocket and pointed at it and said “few old men?” and i read it out loud, i said “no country for old men” and he said “it doesn’t even make sense… no country.. few old men??” and i said “i’ll have that one” and gave him £3.00 i’ve still never watched that film

    i think that as you go through life, more and more things have memories attached to them and it becomes too exhausting to do anything, because of all the memories all dates are anniversaries every verb or noun is about someone or something and it becomes too much work to do anything, because of having to process all of the past and that’s what kills you

    but then i guess people with no memories would never die

    — chee (hi@chee.party) 2020-04-15