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Japan has its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi (ABC News). Her mentor was the late Shinzo Abe and she’s indicated that she wants to hew more closely to his policies.
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Saturday and Sunday were miserable weather-wise. This was especially a shame on Sunday because that the annual Shakujii Shōtengai Hallowe’en Parade. It was an especial shame because I think it’s not looking like there’s any trick or treating in the area where we live. There wasn’t much in our previous place but the little old lady at the end of our floor did have a sign out (for whatever reason) and so the kids had one place they could visit.
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I briefly lost my keys. I’m still not exactly sure how it happened but they must have fallen out of my pocket as I was walking home from the supermarket on Sunday. I realised they were gone as soon as I got home and then quickly went back out again to retrace my steps. I fortunately found them about halfway between the house and the supermarket.
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John was having trouble sleeping earlier in the week and I thought I would try reading to him. My initial plan was to buy the Kindle version of the Minecraft novelisation but it didn’t show up when I searched for it (it does exist) so I bought Minecraft: The Island instead (Amazon Japan). The cover prominently notes that the author, Max Brooks, is the author of World War Z. What I didn’t realise until looking him up on Wikipedia is that he’s the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft (Wikipedia).
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During a conversation earlier this week, I wanted to credit the aphorism that ‘news is what somebody does not want you to print; all the rest is advertising’ to George Orwell but hesitated, suspecting that this might be a misattribution. It turns out it is (Quote Investigator).
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Since we’re not going back to Australia this Christmas, I’ve started thinking about what we’ll do instead. Christmas Day is unfortunately the last day of the school year and for various reasons the kids need to be there so while I did wonder about a trip to Disneyland, that won’t be on the cards. The father of one of the families we are friends with is Canadian and I did think about having a Boxing Day Party on 26 December with the joke being that I’m only inviting people who know what that is.
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I sometimes despair at the level of acclaim awarded to Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed. Not because I think it’s a bad film—honestly, I saw it once in the cinema and haven’t watched it again. My antipathy comes from the fact I loved the film it remakes, the 2002 Hong Kong crime drama Infernal Affairs (Wikipedia). I was therefore exactly the target audience for a video essay comparing the two films on the YouTube channel, Just One More Thing. The essayist doesn’t dislike Scorsese’s adaptation but he does (to me correctly) point out some of the ways in which Infernal Affairs is superior.
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Eri and the children are quite fond of a song that’s sometimes played on NHK Education TV’s 0655 morning programme. The song, ‘Ta.Tsu.Ko.Ta.Tsu’ (Apple Music), is an extended pun about a dragon who sits at a kotatsu. Unfortunately, part of what makes the song so good is the minimalist animation that accompanies it and which NHK does not make available on a platform like YouTube. You can get a taste of it in an ad that was made to promote the picture book that the song spawned (YouTube).
