Two-thirds of the roughly 150 currencies have weakened against the dollar, whose strength stems from high interest rates because of stubborn inflation.

1. Tagged with
2. japan
3. economy

• 💯💯. I never thought when I started my weekly blog posts in a whim in 3.8 years ago, I'd continue doing it for the next 199 weeks. Around 100 weeks ago I had flirted with the idea of maybe not doing the week every week. This time, no such thought occurs.
• 🐨 Golden week started this week. It's a bit of a miss year because instead of having a nice string of days off in a row, there's effectively a 3-day weekend followed by 3 regular days, thena 4-day weekend. But as it's Golden week a lot of stores were prepared for massive crowds.
  
  The Pokemon center in Yokohama was as well. Their website said you'd need to get a reservation ticket and you could only enter to shop during that reserved time. I needed to get out of the house, so we decided to go and see what happens. As it turned out, we arrive 2-minutes before they decided to open the store to everyone without any reservations. It was still massively crowded, taking us 20 -30 minutes to check out. The entire way home Leo held on to his Mew plushie and it was super cute.
• 🍖 We celebrated Showa day by having a BBQ at another friend's house. Instead of tacos, this time we made ahijo and I brought some fresh baked bread. It was a lot of fun.
• ✈️ We bought tickets for a trip to the US this summer. Direct flights to Seattle (or anywhere in the US) from Japan are expensive. It's about $2,000 cheaper if we fly through Hawaii and take a domestic flight to Seattle. We've never been to Hawaii before, so we decided to split the difference and stay for few days in Waikiki. I'm really looking forward to the trip to see my Dad (it's been almost 8 years?! 😱) and for him to meet his grandson for the first time.
• 💴 While the trip (as a whole) is gonna be fun, the exchange rate is giving me a bit of a pause. The strong dollar sent the yen down to ¥160 /dollar - rates not seen since 1990. One one hand, I can't control the exchange rate so it'll be what it'll be...but also ouch.

Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.

1. Tagged with
2. politics
3. internet

• 🍖 We had a BBQ with a couple of friends at friend's house nearby and it was a lot of fun. They've got a large chunk of land (probably what would fit 6 or so Japanese houses?) so they actually had a nice chunk of grass out back. They're close enough that I was able to load up a wagon and pull our contributions. On the menu was chicken tacos (corn + flour), roast beef, onions pulled directly from the garden, and craft beer and more. Excellent fun and good conversation.
• 🏃 I got two runs in last week, which rather happy about. The running itself isn't the hard part, but rather finding / making the time. Even a 30 minute run takes an hour when you factor in changing, showering, and a short warm up walk. Technically I have the time shortly after I wake up most days, but it's not quite hot enough outside to necessitate 5am runs. 
• 🎉 Episode 16 of Inside Octopus Energy podcast is focused on Kraken. Worth mentioning on this blog because it includes a few couple of shout outs to my team in Japan for the AI / LLM product work we've done over the past couple of years. Always nice to get shout outs from the top.