gustafer

Japan-based geocaching group on Facebook. 日本のジオキャッシンググループ（Facebook） https://www.facebook.com/groups/geocachingjapan

Thanks, Moun10Bike, for your quick reply! Only a few hours -- wow, that's a quick update. Again, many many thanks! -gustafer That phrase was intended to lead into the second paragraph explaining its meaning: we are taking the site down at 8:00 PM PST tonight to make the hardware switch necessary to handle the change. We aren't sure exactly how long this will take, but are hoping that the work will be done within 3 hours.

Hello Moun10Bike, Thank you for the release note for the next geocaching.com update. I, and many of us geocaching in Japan, appreciate the move to double-byte characters. Now it will be so much easier to log! Many thanks to the geocaching.com team for implementing this change. For the Japanese geocaching community, this is a huge moment. The update will in many ways improve the game's experience. I have a question about exactly when this change will take place. The release note about how "the update won't be immediate." Can you clarify what is meant by this? I ask because many of us, depending on which platform or apps we use, re-encode our Japanese logs by using apps or online tools. This update would mean that we will not have to do so. We would like to know when we should stop re-encoding our logs. Again, many thanks! gustafer (from Tokyo)

HI CeeLBee. There is a vibrant community of geocachers in Japan, and specifically in Tokyo. I'm relatively a newbie myself and I cache with my family (wife and two kids) in Tokyo. Over the course of this year I have met and communicated with many GCers. They are a good bunch and do a fine job of making newcomers feel very welcome. The place to go is the group page on Facebook.com. (http://www.facebook.com/groups/geocachingjapan/) On this Facebook group page, the exchange is mostly in Japanese language, but from time to time English is used. FYI, there is an end-of-the-year party in Gotanda on December 8 and a 12-12-12 event in Shinbashi on Dec 12. Also, please feel free to send me a message if you have any other questions or just want to ask for advice! And welcome!

Thanks to Moun10Bike for the explanation on what Groundspeak is doing with respect to this timestamp error. I am a newcomer to the sport and geocache mostly in Japan. Using the iPhone has been great for logging cache find and notes -- logs can be immediately sent and it's easy to attach photos. My kids love to use the app. But the timestamp error is frustrating at times. I noticed that I had missed out on Leap Year Day souvenirs for cache find logged via my iPhone (luckily I had to log one at home on my computer). Yesterday it snowed in Tokyo for the first time in a while and when I had uploaded a photo of a snow-covered scene, the cache owner kindly sent me a message saying that the date on my log is a day behind. So I hope the problem can be fixed and fixed very soon!

I am having trouble with using Japanese for logs. The Japanese input becomes unintelligible code, a phenomenon commonly known as mojibake. In case others are also facing this problem, Japanese geocaching sites have provided a solution for this (HTML entity encode). Thanks for this handy tool! I wonder, though, if the problem is caused by this site's character set configuration. I'm no expert in website administration, but when I have set up Wordpress and Drupal sites for my own personal use, I have always had to change the database's setting to UTF-8 so as to enable both English and Japanese input.