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Golden Week is over! Here’s how things went down this year:
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Friday was Constitution Day and although it really has nothing to do with constitutions, I spent the morning riding a train and bus with Rowan. In the afternoon, Emma had a private swimming lesson where she advanced another level in the sports club’s junior swimming program.
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Saturday was Green Day and other than taking Emma to her English class in the morning, things were pretty uneventful.
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Sunday was Children’s Day. Emma and John had their swimming class in the morning and then because it was such a nice day and I wanted an excuse to go somewhere, I took Rowan to Ueno Station and we rode the E7 shinkansen one stop south to Tokyo Station. I’d bought a generic ticket so we spent about 15 minutes on the platform before we boarded a train just watching the various shinkansen trains going back and forth. After that, I took Rowan to the Hawaiian burger place in Marunouchi for lunch.
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Because Sunday is not considered a workday, the public holiday for Children’s Day was observed on Monday. I borrowed the car and drove the kids over to my friend, Ferdinando’s house and we spent most of the day with him and his three kids. He lives quite close to the relatively new MUFG Park and so we went over there for a picnic lunch. It was cloudy and windy and not as nice as the previous three days but the company more than made up for it.
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Eugenia mentioned she had started fasting and convinced me to give it a go. The fasting regimen she’s on involves (1) a 42-hour fast from Sunday evening to Tuesday afternoon, (2) a 24-hour fast from Tuesday evening to Wednesday evening, (3) a 42-hour fast from Wednesday evening to Friday afternoon and then (4) a 24-hour fast from Friday evening to Saturday evening. I started on Wednesday with the 42-hour fast and while it was difficult, I did manage to make it to Friday. I found the 24-hour fast over Saturday much easier and the second 42-hour fast not too difficult. When I break the fast, I’m still not eating very healthily but I’m hopeful the fasting periods will at least mean that I’m not ingesting as much junk as I have been.
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Unfortunately, I can’t say my Japanese study went any better this week than last. Part of that is maybe the fault of the NBA play-offs. It was only ¥4500 for the month to renew my Rakuten subscription and so far the games have been great. As someone who grew up watching sport in a more dedicated, I feel a bit icky only watching the post-season but it sure is tempting.
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I didn’t make it further with Shōgun but I am all caught up with the latest episodes of Law & Order. I thought the most recent episode, ‘Castle in the Sky’, was excellent and am really hoping it can keep the quality this high.
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Somehow I’d made it to 2024 and never seen Rocket Jump’s ‘How Star Wars was saved in the edit’. If an 18-minute video about how editing drastically improved A New Hope sounds like something up your alley,
I highly recommend it. (Update: After watching ‘How “How Star Wars was saved in the edit’ was saved in the edit (sort of, but not really), I’m rescinding the recommendation. I think the premise that Star Wars was in an almost unsalveagable state in 1976 is incorrect.) -
Slate’s Hit Parade podcast recently finished up an episode about cover songs and of course mentioned the story of Aretha Franklin’s cover of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’. Franklin’s is now rightly the definitive version but Redding’s is worth a listen if (like me) you’ve never heard it before (Apple Music).
