My weekend

Nifty new online archive

Google, in its ever pressing desire to take over the world, has introduced a new archive of photos from Life dating from the beginning of photographs to the 1970s. Some of the photos have never been published before. Linky.

There's a lot of cool stuff, like a bunch of old-timey pictures of airbases like Barksdale. Or pictures of the Ruins of Persepolis, one of the 10 coolest places in the world American's really can't go. Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Kittens. Basically, anything you want.

Dollars and Yens

The US dollar is hovering at 100 yen in currency exchange these days. Although I am confident my home currency will recover eventually and once again beat out Japan by a wider margin, this is an economic bright spot at the moment for me, because I get more bang for my yen when sending money back. I have to pay some bills in the US so in the next few days I have to send some money back. I am of course happy to get almost $100 for every 10,000 yen I send back instead of $90.

So what makes the yen strong? Japan hasn't been growing very quickly in the last 20 years ever since the housing bubble burst. And one of the reasons is that people have stuck to very low-risk, low-reward economic policy. They also turned their economy inward, focusing on domestic development (ridiculous overpriced domestically grown fruit, for instance) over international trade.

Whatever that means, Japan doesn't have banks falling left and right at the moment. Instead, it's trucking along just as it has been, although cautiously lest the world drag it along with them into the dirt. And Mitsubishi just bought 21% of Morgan Stanley.

I should have kept up with studying economics more...I want to be able to have grand universal theories about this global economic crisis.

A special treat for you all.

I made a video!



Please enjoy the images of Japan set to cheesy music, followed by a brief clip of karaoke funtimes.

Dinner and a Family

One of the nicest things I got from my predecessor wasn't the TV, or the (ugly) couch, or the bookshelves, or the kitchenware. You see, my predecessor left me a family.

Once a week on Wednesday or Thursday usually, the Iwada family welcomes me into their home. Mr. I is a psychiatrist who wants to get a fellowship in the US and live there. He is working hard to study English and hopes to get a good enough score on the TOEIC test to get a position in the US. Mrs. I is a stay-at-home mom who studies English every day and is trying to get over an 800 on the TOEIC. They both took the test last month again, and the missus improved her previous score by 100 points! (up to 620) So I hope I can be of help to them, teaching them English.

Oh also, they have offspring. Ma-kun and Ma-chan. They are cute. I mean, they are adorable. I mean, they are a 5 year old boy, and a 2 year old girl. Today was my third week visiting them, and Ma-chan hugged me! It was really nice, because the first day she was so afraid and would cry she caught me looking at her the wrong way.

The kids have the most hilarious books. I'll blog about them sometime. We didn't read books tonight so I can't remember the plots, but they are these children books in English written by a Japanese author for Japanese children, and the plots tend to be bizarre, or end suddenly, or totally change halfway through without warning. Oh I remember one of the plots a little, it's a book called "Balloon Cat" and the ending is "Balloon cat floated up toward the moon." next page, pictures of opposite things! "Short! Tall!" etc. WHAT?

Even if they didn't pay me 3 watermelons worth a week in yen for the pleasure of their company, the food alone would be worth it. There's always 4 or 5 different things, and fruit for dessert. It's quite lovely and saves me the trip to the conbini (convenience store) for a premade meal. Or cooking myself a small portion of spaghetti...again. :)

But ah, to spend the evening with learned, well-travelled Japanese people with fairly competent English levels explaining the differences between "abbreviation" and "contraction", or "any of them" and "some of them", whilst eating everything in sight and playing with baby children.

Also I learn some new Japanese as well!

Ah...so far, this is one of the best things about Japan for me. Every week I have something to look forward to.

Shopping Therapy.

Peter Rabbit towel - ¥105

Kiyomi Taguchi kitty wallet - ¥525

Monkey and cat pot holders - ¥210

Triumphant fairy puzzle (1000 pc) - ¥3,280

Getting through a terrible sunburn sustained at Kozomi beach by buying fun new things - PRICELESS

Videos from Gaina Matsuri

A pair of cool vids I captured at the Gaina Matsuri. Enjoy!

First, umbrella dancing.



Second, lantern balancing.