Category: Japan
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We’re Back!
We’ve just got back from our Golden Week holiday, to various places in Tohoku. It was a really, really good trip; six nights, seven days. I can’t remember last time I went on trip that long that wasn’t to visit family. I also took lots of photos, so detailed accounts, with pictures, will go up…
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Diary Entry
A new diary entry is online.
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Diary Entry
I’ve put a new diary entry online.
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How to Pick Names
I had a new student today, who wrote an essay about a professor of robotics at Tsukuba University, who has designed a powered exoskeleton called HAL, and founded a company called Cyberdyne, Inc, to work on cybernetics, robotics, and medical engineering. All for the good of humanity, it says on the home page.
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Mother-Child Health Record Book
The Mother-Child Health Record Book is a small book issued to all pregnant women by the Japanese government. The actual records go in the first half, which is set by the national government, while the second half, written by the local government, contains additional useful information for parents-to-be. The book covers the time from becoming…
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Earthquake, but not here
As people are likely to hear from the news, there was a big earthquake in Japan this morning, a bit over an hour ago. However, it was in Ishikawa-ken, which is the other side of the country from Tokyo, so we hardly felt it. (Go west across the width of Japan; that’s Ishikawa-ken, roughly.) So,…
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Walking to Shibuya
Yesterday I walked to Shibuya. All told, it took me about four hours, but that included popping into a couple of shrines I passed on the way, and a shop, and getting a bit lost around the Tama river, and eating lunch just as I arrived in Shibuya. Looking at the map, it’s about ten…
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The Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents
Today I went to observe a meeting of the Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents. I mentioned going to the open meeting in my diary back in December, and after that I felt that I wanted to see what a normal meeting was like. My original plan was to go in January, but that…
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Taxes
Japan has lots of taxes. It isn’t that the tax rates are particularly high, but there are just a lot of categories. Yesterday, I submitted my return for my income taxes. I actually calculated my national income tax bill on the form itself, but the same information will also be used to calculate my local…
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But is it news?
Recently, I’ve been listening to the podcast from the Yomiuri newspaper just about every weekday. This is partly to improve my listening comprehension, and partly to keep up with the Japanese news. The podcast is released every weekday morning, and generally follows a fixed format. First, there are half a dozen or so news stories,…