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I wrote in an earlier draft of this week’s update that I was worried that I might never get my My Number card (Wikipedia). I partly wrote it with the hope that I was daring the universe to have the card arrive and it worked! Well, sort of. What I received was a notification letter that had a code that I needed to input into a reservation system to reserve a ‘time’ to come and get the card. Except the card is presumably always at the collection centre so why do I need to reserve a time? Why can’t I just come down at any time to collect it? At first, I thought it was because there are in fact a number of collection centres and you needed to tell them which centre you want to collect the card from but no, I have a designated centre to collect it from and the system will reject any attempt to specify a different collection centre.
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In writing the above, I realised I didn’t write about applying for it when I lodged the application. So in 2016, Japan introduced the Individual Number system (Wikipedia). The system gave every resident an individual number but did not mandate that individuals obtain a physical card. I’ve resisted getting a card which is silly given that the my individual number has already been assigned. But whatever, humans aren’t logical. And indeed, a lot of people in Japan avoided getting a card for the first few years but that’s changed over time and a number of systems now treat you having a card as the default case. I wanted to change my address at a bank the other day and if I’d had a My Number card, that’s all I’d need but since I don’t, I need to show both a driver’s licence and a copy of my residential registration showing my individual number (to get this would require me to go to my local ward office). So, yeah, you win this one I guess, universe. Or Taro Kono.
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Through the vagaries of fate, I was able to see Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. I didn’t think it was any great shakes but I am glad that it prompted an hour-long chat with Brandon about what went wrong with the franchise. At one point in the discussion, Brandon mentioned he hopes for a TV series to eventually be spun off which is so obviously what should happen that I was kicking myself for not thinking of it. This is now my fervent wish for what they do next.
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I finally finished season two of Severance. It was really good and left me extremely conflicted with what I thought about the character of Mark (which, in this context, is a good thing). I’m looking forward to where things go in season three.
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I saw a link on Bluesky to Kirsten Drysdale’s video about a bench in a Chinese park. It’s 12 minutes and just excellent. I hadn’t heard of Drysdale’s channel, ‘The Internet, Reviewed’, but watched a few of her other videos and liked those, too.
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Growing up in Australia in the late 80s, Kylie Minogue felt omnipresent. Then the early-90s happened and she went to England or something and just dropped completely off my radar. There was that song with Nick Cave, that brief period where she seemed in danger of becoming Goldfrapp and then the triumphant comeback to pop stardom with 2000’s Light Years and 2001’s Fever. In my mind, she was in her 40s when this happened and it was a real surprise that she still had it in her. This week I looked it up and she was 32 when ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ came out (Apple Music). 32! I’m a decade past that at this point. Time to admit my chance to record that crossover gay anthem has fully passed.
