只今あああ！
It’s always been hard to get my feet back on the ground in Europe when returning from Asia, and that’s particularly true after having spent close to a month in Tōkyō. What’s more, jetlag. Plus, going straight from 90 to 60 ˚F doesn’t help. Also, neither does switching from smoothly buzzing around with subways, regional trains, and the Shinkansen to not getting anywhere in time with the decrepit German transportation system where the S-Bahn at DUS airport was 20 fucking minutes late JUST FOR STARTERS. Spending time with my friends was awesome. We did a huge load of absolutely amazing stuff, and I still got some serious work done, among which I finally managed to nail my second novel’s midpoint. Hooray! Now, two questions I get asked a lot. As for the first, I love both Tōkyō and Singapore to death but if forced to choose, it’d still choose Tōkyō. As for the second question, no, I didn’t look for a job—before I can even think of doing that, I'd have to get my Japanese back into shape. Which hasn’t exactly improved since I studied Modern Japan ages ago for two years at the university. But yeah, I’m on it!
As a recommendation, if you want to go see Japan, do it now. At the moment, the yen is so ridiculously low that Tōkyō is noticeably less expensive than, say, Düsseldorf. On my trip back, I bought two onigiri (tuna mayo and red salmon & salt) and a bottle of Oi Ocha at Haneda Airport for ¥345, which amounts to slightly more than 2 dollars or slightly less than 2 euros right now. Yeah, that low. It’s terrible for the people in Japan and I really hope the yen will recover soon, but right now your $ or € do buy you a lot. (For the best exchange rate, bring cash and convert it to yen at the Haneda Airport currency exchange service after arrival.)
During that month, I’ve neither written any blog posts nor published any albums, except for 13 photos over at Pixelfed from various locations in Japan. So that’s that.
And for the Sunday Funnies, finally, here’s an Honest Government Ad on AI. Which, alas, is also grim because everything in it is true! But yeah, also funny.
Cheers
J.
It’s always been hard to get my feet back on the ground in Europe when returning from Asia, and that’s particularly true after having spent close to a month in Tōkyō. What’s more, jetlag. Plus, going straight from 90 to 60 ˚F doesn’t help. Also, neither does switching from smoothly buzzing around with subways, regional trains, and the Shinkansen to not getting anywhere in time with the decrepit German transportation system where the S-Bahn at DUS airport was 20 fucking minutes late JUST FOR STARTERS. Spending time with my friends was awesome. We did a huge load of absolutely amazing stuff, and I still got some serious work done, among which I finally managed to nail my second novel’s midpoint. Hooray! Now, two questions I get asked a lot. As for the first, I love both Tōkyō and Singapore to death but if forced to choose, it’d still choose Tōkyō. As for the second question, no, I didn’t look for a job—before I can even think of doing that, I'd have to get my Japanese back into shape. Which hasn’t exactly improved since I studied Modern Japan ages ago for two years at the university. But yeah, I’m on it!
As a recommendation, if you want to go see Japan, do it now. At the moment, the yen is so ridiculously low that Tōkyō is noticeably less expensive than, say, Düsseldorf. On my trip back, I bought two onigiri (tuna mayo and red salmon & salt) and a bottle of Oi Ocha at Haneda Airport for ¥345, which amounts to slightly more than 2 dollars or slightly less than 2 euros right now. Yeah, that low. It’s terrible for the people in Japan and I really hope the yen will recover soon, but right now your $ or € do buy you a lot. (For the best exchange rate, bring cash and convert it to yen at the Haneda Airport currency exchange service after arrival.)
During that month, I’ve neither written any blog posts nor published any albums, except for 13 photos over at Pixelfed from various locations in Japan. So that’s that.
And for the Sunday Funnies, finally, here’s an Honest Government Ad on AI. Which, alas, is also grim because everything in it is true! But yeah, also funny.
Cheers
J.