Well, winter clothes are packed in a box. I'm allowed to send one in advance. And I bought a slightly larger suitcase to pack everything else, so I think I'm set. The only thing that I don't have in yet is those new glasses that I ordered. I'm really hoping those come in soon.
My new yen is in too by the way, which is good because now I'll be able to afford things like books and a bike and other spiffiness. What is not spiffy is the current exchange rate. 85 yen to the dollar. Rough. Come on US! Let's get the dollar stronger because perhaps I'm a little selfish and I'd like to have a good exchange rate. ;)
I'm beginning to realize how boring this flight is going to be. I think I'll have to make friends with whatever person is sitting next to me.
In other news, I'm not sure how much everyone is currently keeping up with the Japanese news, but there's been a lot of talk about ridiculously elderly people receiving money. Now, don't misunderstand. I'm a fan of the elderly. They tell those awesome "When I was your age" stories. They're great. Anyway, back to the point. We all know about pensions. In Japan, it's been taken to the extreme lately. Family members have been hiding the truth about their elderly members' status. People who should within all rights be dead are still receiving pensions. We're talking about people who are 124 years old here. Considering this is physically impossible, I think we can call this a little absurd. This all started when government officials discovered the mummified body of an individual who had been receiving pensions for years - 30 years to be exact. The family members had left the person in the bed, and had been instructed not to enter the room for any reason. Now, without food and water, any person is going to pass. I don't care who you are. The stories have been ridiculous and the situation is a mess. The Japanese are extremely proud of their elderly population and to suddenly lose all of these centenarians is a shame. Japanese officials are now looking at everyone 100+ and trying to figure out their status. You may be asking, "How on earth did they not notice? 124 is pretty dang old." Yes it is. Well, to answer you're little question, let's look at it this way.
An official shows up at your house and asks to see your 100 year old grandmother. Grandma doesn't like to be disturbed, right? She's 100. Honestly, when you near triple digits, you sort of get the right not to be bothered for trivial little things like an official visiting the door to see if you're alive or not. So, you tell the official, "Grandma's taking a nap in the other room. I promise she's doing great, but can we please not wake her up?" That seems polite enough. So the official leaves. Great. But how do you do this for years? Well, there's a simple enough explanation for that too. When the official comes again, you just mention that grandma went to visit other relatives. If it's out of of the province, the official can't really go to the next one to check on grandma. It's out of his jurisdiction. And this is exactly what has been happening. Birthdays have just been tallied up and no one has really looked at them until they found the mummified body of that one individual. When they went out searching for what they thought was the oldest woman, 113 years old, they found that her address had been turned into a park quite a while ago. Now, Japan is desperately trying to save face and to find these missing people, but it doesn't look good. There's some serious pension fraud going on here, and we'll see how it plays out. Here are a few links if you're still interested:
Till next week!
Michelle
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