Life slows Down
Last week Thursday was my official last day of work. After having already made all the good-byes and gone to all the farewell parties, the last day of work was a little anti-climatic. In fact, the office told me they would like me to stop in again sometime to give me a certificate of participation in the JET program (which appearently was not ready last week).

So, I agree with Josh that after a very busy couple of weeks, things are beginning to slow down. The past couple days I've been doing things like watching a lot of TV and coming to this internet cafe. I've been trying to catch up on all those e-mails (I'm trying, I swear) I haven't yet returned.

Few things of interest. My friend Aaron has really been on a role lately with his weblog. Check out this post on the Presidential War Records. Along the same lines, "This Modern World" has a post: "George W. Bush sucker-punches a rugby opponent at Yale" (really) and then raises the point about what would happen if a photo of John Kerry doing the same thing had surfaced. Brian Bork has some excellent thoughts on the media and the election.

And Josh is doing a good job of taking over from me as the chronicler of life in Ajimu. His most recent post raises an interesting question of the legacy of the schwastica in Japan. As he mentions, much to my surprise I have seen some model students sporting the schwastica at the Junior High School. I think though, because Japan does not have a history of a strong white supremacist movement, the schwastica does not carry the same sensitivities it does in the West. It is therefore regarded more as a historical oddity.

Of course Japan was allied with Nazi Germany, but it was a very loose alliance, and the impression I get from Japanese media is that Japan disassociates itself from Germay's atrocities. Perhaps similar to the way Americans feel no guilt for Stalin's atrocities, who was our allie during the war.