This week...

...what I learned about Japan included the following:
(1) It costs $38.40 to transfer $200 from a bank account here to an account in South Korea. According to the Economist, that is most expensive money transfer fee in the world.
(2) Hokkaido is below the national average (256) when it comes to the number of doctors per 10,000 people; we're at 218. In the region in which Muroran is situated, it drops to 187. Out east in Nemuro district where I use to live, the most quacks they can entice to this little bit of sub-arctic heaven, is 94.
(3) Katsuya Takahashi, the last Aum Shinrikyo fugitive wanted in connection with the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system, had apparently being living and working in Kawasaki city, just south of Tokyo, for the past 10 years. He is now Japan's most wanted man, with a bounty of 10 million yen. My wife assures me that he is no relation, but you have to wonder...
(4) The Japanese are mad. Okay, a bit of a generalization, but those working at my wife's school are definitely certifiable. Yesterday, my wife's elementary school held their undokai, or sports day (which will be the subject of a long polemic post when Cian's turn comes around next year). Yesterday, it rained, heavily. Listen to me, it pissed out of the heavens folks. All day. There was so much rain pouring down that Muroran's few (though game) evangelical missionaries panicked and began building an ark. Even the ducks were complaining. Yet at 6.30a-frigging-m, the fireworks went off signalling that the undokai would go ahead. (To explain the fireworks part: in Japan, this gunpowder happy nation, when major community events are deemed 'good to go', it is traditional to launch fireworks, early in the morning, as a means of informing all and sundry regardless of whether you are participating or not. And no, I don't know how they inform the deaf. Probably something equally traditional like email.) Anyway, the principal of Sanae's school, channeling his inner King Lear, decided to front up to the weather and go ahead with the undokai because this was the day for the undokai and, well, this was the day for the undokai. The day. This day. Not some other dry weather day.

And so Sanae duly splashed off at seven in the morning to rescue her class from drowning and/or death from exposure, while me and Cian stayed at home watching Winnie the Pooh and shaking our heads at the apparent climatic madness that runs through his maternal bloodline.