I was at my office during yesterday’s 5.7 earthquake in Chiba. It seemed like it went on for a really long time. It was powerful enough to knock over some books on my desk and completely shut down the elevator in our building, but other than that no damage was done. It was, however, the first time an earthquake has made me want to dive for cover.
Our son, on the other hand, reportedly slept through the whole thing without stirring.
Showa Kinen Park is a really nice place to go with kids. If I had a bit more time, I would go into more detail, but for now I’ll have to make do with a picture from the sunflower patch.
As far as I know, our local Movix is one of the few movie theaters that actually offers a “Men’s Day” special to complement the “Ladies’ Day” specials that can be found nearly everywhere. (Like the neighboring Toho Cinema, for example.) At Movix, every Thursday is Men’s Day, which means that men can see movies for only ¥1000 instead of the usual ¥1800.
Today being the first Thursday after the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith here in Japan, I left the office as soon as I could to go catch the movie that I have long thought of as the last bit of unfinished business from my childhood. Now I can live out the rest of my life content in the knowledge that I know the whole story—and that alone is worth every last yen’s worth of the price of admission.
In my About page, I link to Zero Dean’s FAQ about his unusual name as a shameless way to dodge explaining my own. Zero noticed:
This was a time when a lot of people were naming their children unusual things. I could’ve easily been named “Sako”, or “Peace”, or “Rainbow”, or “Dweezil”, or “Moon Unit” or something… but instead, I got Zero.
Ah, yes, Moon Unit...I’m pretty sure I narrowly avoided getting that one myself.
Browsing around Zero’s site a bit more, I found something else we have in common: High-end Canon digital SLRs. Something tells me that if Zero and I ever met in person, we’d have plenty of things to talk about. We might even remember each other’s names afterward.
I normally don’t pay much attention to the pseudo-English expressions used in Japanese advertising, but sometimes the Japanese borrow a word from English, shorten its pronounciation to make it easier to write in katakana, and then use the shortened version in what it presumably intended to be English advertising copy—sometimes with less than appealing results. This sandwich wrapper from KFC is one recent example.
This is the weblog of an American expat in Japan, a father of two, a loving husband, an armchair political wonk, an inveterate geek, and an all-around garden-variety fool.
