blog.arithm

According to Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, Japan’s “debt to budget ratio is more than 50 percent” and without issuing more government bonds would be bankrupt by 2011.

This comes on the heals of strange reports from friends working in the Japanese IT industry. Supposedly Japanese tax collectors are showing up, unannounced, at medium and large-sized IT gaishikei, rifling through the books and insisting to peak into the accounts of executives.

Hmmm.

Check out the comments on this 鷺沼 community thread in Mixi. Lots of posts with heart marks. Looks like Michael and Naomi have hit it big.

すごい。頑張れMichael & Naomi!!

横浜に住んでいる友人のMichaelとなおみさんが、２年前から自分のピザ屋さんをオープンしたいと言っていたのですが、ようやく鷺沼でオープンしました！

Michaelのピザはすごく美味しいので、ぜひ一度試してみてください。詳しくは「暮らしのエッセンス」ブログの記事へ。

After two years of planning, some old friends of ours from Yokohama, Michael and Naomi, have at long last opened their own pizza place in Saginuma!

I can vouch that Michael makes some great pizza.  Be sure to check it out if you’re in the area!

Michael’s Pizza
Yayoi Building 102
Arima 9-3-14
Miyamae-ku, Kawasaki
☎ 044-856-7075

Open 11:30 ~ 14:30, 18:00 ~ 21:30; Mondays closed

Tell them Evan sent you!

Closely on the heals of my breaking story about $300 cherries, I noticed today that the yen has broken the one dollar mark. To the best of my knowledge this hasn’t happened since ’round about 1995, back when I was living in rural Miyazaki in a small house infested with giant Japanese house spiders that always reminded me eerily of the spider head from John Carpenter’s The Thing. (The Thing tagline: “Man is the warmest place to hide.”)

Oddly enough, the spider head was once available from Amazon.com and apparently featured “an incredible sculpt that captures the spirit of this character.” Which would therefore be the spirit of a diabolically murderous shape-shifting alien entity bent on infesting all of humanity. Talk about craftsmanship.

Fortunately with the new exchange rate I can leverage my Sumitomo savings and back order a dozen or so.  I might even be able to afford a Ghosts of Mars action figure or two..

From our remote correspondent in Tokyo.

30,000 JPY for forty cherries. Almost $300 dollars.

Now I’m sure that each cherry was individually encased in protective polystyrene cushioning, perfectly cooled, and personally serenaded to sleep each night by various members of the Tsunk Family, but still… I think this is a little excessive.

I can’t believe I lived in Japan for ten years and am just now discovering Hoppy.

I had seen Hoppy around over the years and had always just assumed it was another low-end beer, kind of like Sapporo’s Drafty. Recently while exploring local ramen shops in Gotanda, however, the master asked if I wanted to exchange my beer ticket for a beer or Hoppy. “Or”? I figured I better try the Hoppy.

It turns out Hoppy is a low-alcohol carbonated beer-flavored concoction for mixing with shochu. I’m told that Hoppy was the working man’s alternative to beer some fifty years ago, back when beer was still too expensive for the average Japanese. Why pay for beer when you can have beer-flavored shochu?

Surprisingly, Hoppy is not too bad. It tastes somewhat like a weak beer, though thanks to the liberal amounts of shochu it is most often mixed with, is a deceptively strong drink. That said, since shochu doesn’t give me a hangover like beer, and adds only 10 calories per 100 millimeters, Hoppy may a new standby for the prerequisite beer pounding during trips back to Tokyo.