David Chart's Blog

Author: David Chart

  • Earthquake

    I see that today’s earthquake has also made the international news. We’re all fine. We felt it, and it was long, but it wasn’t that strong here. Much smaller than last year’s. NHK are still broadcasting tsunami warnings for Tohoku, though.

  • Residence Card

    Today I went to the immigration office to exchange my Certificate of Alien Registration for a Residence Card. The system for foreigners resident in Japan changed in July, and everyone needs to change to a Residence Card. They don’t need to do it immediately, but it’s not entirely clear when they should. If you have…

  • The Dalai Lama

    Today, the Dalai Lama gave a lecture to members of the Japanese Diet, and I was invited to attend. Not, of course, because I’m a member of the Japanese Diet, but one of my students is, and I helped out a little bit with the preparations for the event, so I got an invitation in…

  • English Practice

    Yesterday at dinner time, Mayuki decided to pretend that I was an American customer who didn’t speak Japanese. She bowed properly to me, and told me about the dinner in English, staying in English when she talked at the table as well. She kept it up for quite a long time before she “went home”…

  • Ars Magica Video Game Kickstarter

    We (Atlas and I) are working with Black Chicken Studios to produce an Ars Magica video game. (I suspect that Black Chicken will be doing most of the work, being the video game people, but we will have a lot of input as well.) Black Chicken have launched a Kickstarter to fund it. Atlas has…

  • Mayuki’s Make-up

    Yesterday, I got home rather late (the same as tonight), but Mayuki was still awake (the same as tonight). However, yesterday she was sitting quietly in a corner of the living room, doing something. I started to go to see what it was, but she said “Don’t look!”, so I left her alone. A bit…

  • Hallowe’en Tree

    I don’t know. It’s only the middle of September, and the shopping centres already have their Hallowe’en Trees up. Hang on a minute… This is the first one I’ve seen in Japan, but for all I know they’re really common. In other news, I continue to be really busy, which is why there are still…

  • Published in Japanese

    Well, it’s been a while since I wrote anything here. I’m not dead; I’m just busy at work, and I’ve managed to sustain daily posts to my Japanese blog, so this one has been a bit (OK, a lot) neglected. I wouldn’t put any money on this post being the start of a trend, either.…

  • Annular Eclipse

    We saw the annular eclipse this morning. The centre went right over Tokyo, so all we had to do was go outside the flat. Given that, there were surprisingly few people there. We bought three viewing glasses, so we could all watch together. It’s a bit cloudy, but the clouds were thin, and the clouds…

  • Obedience

    I’m off work with flu today (with a direct instruction not to go in), and after spending the morning in bed I’ve just got up for a bit. I think I might go back to bed fairly soon, though. But, since I have a bit of time, I want to write a bit about Mayuki.…