Report from Greater Tokyo

These were the words of my supervisor today, when I said that his request of me today went against promises made in a letter he had me sign a couple of weeks previously. I hope that this is all a misunderstanding that can be resolved amicably.

Gentle readers, you will note that on this page I have never mentioned either the name of the school I work for or the names of any of my co-workers. The possibility of this eventuality is the reason why. I have not been incensed enough to badmouth the name of my employer, and I hope that this does not happen.

Well, not so much updates as experiments. I've recently discovered that my server allows me to use php scripting, and I've been downloading various php related scripts. I now have a functioning chatroom, a discussion board, and a wiki. The chat room is seeing extensive use by my friends over on Big Daikon, and a have plans for the wiki to be an online white board for ideas for a new version of the game Civilization. The discussion board is mostly a concept demonstration waiting for a use.

So I went down to Shinjuku to visit my new landlady. Ostensibly this was to pay off the balance of the deposit. Thanks to some possibly crazy plan of mine that I concocted together with my landlady, I was dressed up to the nines for a photo shoot at the same time. This was followed by an unexpected invitation to dinner, with shabu shabu on the menu. Normally, I'd sum YUM to this, but I had a big lunch yesterday, and quite late too, so I ate hardly anything there :(

Oh, did I mention that she has cats? Five of them at the last count, including 3 kittens. The kittens are not related to the adult cats, I think they were a gift from a cat breeder. Apparently, a Russian Blue was accidentally mated with Norwegian Forest, resulting in Anastasia and her two brothers. I think they are cute, and I have been offered one as a pet.

Tomorrow is "Strenuous Walk Day" at my school. Basically, some of the kids will practice their distance running skills in the morning over a 4 km run. The other students will walk it. This is apparently so tiring on the poor kids that they will all get the entire rest of the day off to rest and recover from this tiring activity.

I can understand how this would be tiring for an unfit person to run, but considering that these kids have school organized sports every afternoon plus morning calisthenics every school day, I don't see how walking 4 km would be so tiring that they have to rest for an entire day to recover. Or am I being nostalgic over lost youth here? Perhaps it is mere jealousy over how I never got that much time off school for walking.

While ego surfing the other day, I came across references to some old anime fan fiction I wrote years ago. This set me off searching through online archives to find those stories I wrote (my own archives of those stories having been lost when an old PC of mine exploded). I'm thinking of put these old stories back online now.

I have a kanji exam tomorrow. I have to know about 440 kanji inside out. Everything from how to read them to stroke order and how to write them. I know maybe 50 in that much detail, maybe 4 times that if only considering how to read them. I am going to fail so badly it isn't even worth studying for this exam. Fortunately I have nothing beyond my own satisfaction riding on my success in this exam.

It isn't even a republic. Check these articles out for how the vote counting process failed.

Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
Kerry Won

I went to see an estate agent last weekend about finding a place near Shinjuku. And there were some nice, if somewhat expensive, apartments. Of course, expensive by central Tokyo standards merely means it is normal by outer London standards. The idea that Tokyo is the most expensive city on Earth is a myth promoted by the executive expat community who think nothing of paying four times the normal rate for accommodation, simply because they don't know any better.

Unfortunately, most Japanese landlords want a Japanese person to act as your hoshounin, or guarantor, before they will rent out to you. This guy is basically saying you'll not burn it down, and you'll pay your rent on time. For details I'll not go into here, I can't get one.

Next Sunday, I will go down to Shinjuku to have a look at some nice cheap (but small) places close to Shinjuku itself. Perhaps one of these will be the one.

Take the What High School Stereotype Are You? quiz.

Bush won the election. Even if you assume a little cheating, the popular majority is strong. This despite a back-door draft, reducing military pension and health care, starting a war in Iraq that was not only declared illegal by the UN, but the circumstances in which it was declared were unconstitutional by its own rules, causing record job losses, turning a record budget surplus into a record deficit, and cutting spending on health and education. And that's quite apart from ruining long term alliances without building new ones.

Most people would reflexively think this was proof of American stupidity.

Here's a different point. The USA is a very religious country. Most visitors only see the major tourist areas, and completely miss the bible belt, thus avoiding this little bit of culture shock. The Republican machine efficiently mobilized the religious vote on the abortion issue. The Democrat election campaign failed to present any issues in a religious light, and if anything, dismissed the religiously motivated voter as incorrigibly right-wing. As a result, religious voters had a reason to vote Republican, while the Democratic party all but fell off the political radar for religiously motivated voters.

What if instead of ignoring them, the Democrats had presented their social welfare and international co-operation policies in religious terms? Would we now being looking forward to a new president?