Today is actually my school’s closing ceremony, and so I’m stuck here in the staff room, spending my whole day deskwarming a.k.a. rotting away on my desk. So here I am again, finding time to update my blog. Coincidentally, it’s also July 31 here, so that’s pretty neat!
Here are the books I finished for this month. Oh yeah, I should mention that these three books are among my favorites as well.
Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry – Part 2 of the original Mythos, this retains the tone of the first book. It’s still a fun and informative story about Greek heroes.
The Afterlife of Holly Case by Cynthia Hand – It’s a reread, and I’m so glad I still enjoy it a lot.
At the Heart of It by Tawna Fenske – This is a book that I never thought would have a reread value. Well, surprise! Taking a peek at my Goodreads account showed me that I’ve read this thrice since 2017.
One of the things that I like about living in Japan is being exposed to products that I wouldn’t have known existed.
Sure, there’s this possibility of me reading about these products online, but it would be expensive to have them shipped to the Philippines. If ever they’re available online, I bet that they would cost so much as compared to when buying from Japan.
Two of these products are Printoss and Baby Foot. However, this post is solely dedicated to Printoss, an instant photo printer developed by Takara Tomy, a toy company here in Japan.
Reason for buying Printoss: Polaroid-sized pictures are perfect for the clothespin photo hangers I recently bought to improve the photo wall in my apartment. While searching, I came across Printoss, a product that assured customers that it could take photos of a smartphone screen without using electricity and ink cartridges. All you needed was the device itself, a smartphone, and instax films from Fujifilm.
Built: This is mainly made in plastic, and it comes with lens, shutter, and knob. It also has flaps and a window tray where you place the smartphone screen to align your desired image to the lens. There’s also a tiny mirror that reflects the image on the screen where you can preview the image before clicking on the shutter.
Image Quality: When I used this, I followed what others have said – set the screen brightness to its highest setting to avoid underexposure. Some photos had retro feel to them – not great but not shabby either. However, a lot still were underexposed, and I felt like wasting film.
Sample Prints Left: instax mini Link ; Right: Printoss
Ease of Use: Printoss is easy to use. You just align the screen to the window tray, press the shutter, roll the knob clockwise to release the film, and wait for the photo to develop. I think the most challenging aspect in using this device is making sure that your smartphone stays in place. You might accidentally move the screen when pressing the shutter, so it’s important to use this device on a solid and steady surface.
Price: It costs JPY 2,627 yen (around PHP 1,236) on Amazon Japan. In contrast, the average price is PHP 2,238 (around JPY 4,754) in Lazada. See the difference?
Value for Money: For its price (if bought in Japan), I can say that this is still worth your money. If you want instant photos with some sort of retro filter to it and it’s only for your personal satisfaction, I say go and buy it. In fact, I think children would enjoy using this. The process is so simple that you might find yourself purchasing extra boxes of instax films.
Happy July 1st! The first half of 2020 has finally ended!
I can’t believe how time has gone by especially since the global pandemic covid-19 started blowing up in the first quarter, and now, we’re already halfway of the year!
In my previous wrap up, I mentioned that I had special paid leaves at work as a form of social distancing in the workplace. Those leaves enabled me to read and listen to as many books as I liked.
For May and June however, I’m kind of sad (but not really) that I hadn’t read any book be it in physical or Kindle format. I only listen to audiobooks these days, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. These days, I find myself easily distracted while reading, so I prefer listening to audiobooks and music more.
Hyphenized Changjo 