I Must Inform

"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." -Henry Ford
I like this quote although I disagree with it. If Henry Ford understood how it worked, he would have realized he would have not have been as successful if a bank hadn't given him money to finance his dreams. Or he would have been more successful if he realized someone needed to finance consumers who wanted to purchase his cars. Who financed his 5 bankruptcies?

WARNING: This is a boring article on economic related matters. Don't read if you are allergic to money. I try to keep my blog light and fluffy, but sometimes I think an all-dessert diet begs indigestion. It is pretty much impossible to talk about this in a short blog, but I must since I am a banker in these VERY INTERESTING economic times, lest anyone forget. And so I digress...

What you should know:
Banking and really anything financial boils down to trust. The markets rally or sink based on trust. Did I trust that Bear Sterns was a company of integrity that would never get mixed up in bad loans? Do I trust that anything on the market isn't part of the toxic waste loans? People trusted their non-regulated non-bank mortgage lenders to give them a house. I emphasize non-regulated non-bank because an investment bank is not a bank, it WAS (before it died) a high-risk, non-FDIC insured company that added bank to its name to imply trust. This trust was unfortunately misplaced and now the world is paying for it. The dollar grows weak or strong based on trust. Do other countries still trust us enough to use our currency because they believe we are politically stable and will not default on debt? If the world doesn't trust that we can get ourselves out of the mess we got ourselves into, we can trust they that will flee from us like the plague. You can trust that they will never blindly trust us again.

Obituaries since Sept: Read 'em and weep
-In September, the US reportedly averted a total economic collapse (NOT GOOD! As in near halt of credit card limits, mortgages, student loans, car loans, commodities, etc, as companies would begin to fail like dominoes)
-Global recession officially began when Lehman Bros. (investment bank) was allowed to fail in Sept.
-Iceland, an ENTIRE COUNTRY, went bankrupt.
-In November, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley (investment banks) are converted to commercial banks, ending the risky investment bank era.
-World growth is expected to fall to ½ %, the lowest since WWII.
-A $700 billion blank check was thrown at the US economy (greater than all foreign aid from rich to poor countries in 7 years and enough to save Social Security for the next 100 years)
-The world economy is shuddering to a halt, since the US has historically been the source of 1/3 of global demand.
-Lloyds TSB, which many in Japan use for sending money home, is flailing as a result of a government-forced marriage to a “toxic bank”.
-The UK and Switzerland are in DANGER as each carries debt in foreign dollars which means that the debt can spike out of control very quickly (Ex. In Sept, if I sent $1,000 from Japan [in yen] to the US [in dollars], I lost about $70 depending on the day. Today, if I send $1,000 to the US, I make $70 depending on the day. Now multiply that times billions and imagine me as a country and it gets really scary and unpredictable.) The US carries debt in mostly dollars, so at least in that aspect, we're golden.
-China and India are still expected to grow and many look to them as the world's economic saviors.

Self-Reflection in Stares

I will not look at the windows, though they are everywhere, pools of light reflecting me. The glass magnifies the light that burns into my soul, highlighting shadows and dust. Sometimes, my gaze sees me accidentally and I quickly slide my soul-burned eyes to the ground to avoid them. Why am I afraid to look? What will I see? Will it be the 5-year-old, too terribly naked to even take pictures? Or will it be the 14-year-old who wove a dream around herself to cover her nakedness? I can hear my thoughts scream cover yourself, cover everything about you, and I can't plug my ears. I can see me looking, but I will not look myself. My soul is mine to give you, and I am not yet ready to show me. You stab me with pinpricks of light, that I dutifully swallow, because I gave them to you. Sometimes they travel around my body as intense heat and irritate my stomach, giving me indigestion.
I am not non-Japanese, I am me.
I am not not-you, I am me.
I am you, I am me.
We are the same, don't you see, you and me?
But I can't see unless I look, and you can't see unless I look.
Please close the windows so I can look, it is too bright, and I can't see.

My Shower on Fire?

Yesterday my shower....started on fire...I think ( I have a picture on my Sep 2, 2008 blog). I say I think because smoke was everywhere and I could hear the fizzle of burning. I opened the window and got out of there. I have always been afraid of my Japanese shower; which is understandable considering my naked body is in a watery enclosed room containing gas and fire, and a strange unintelligible machine that I can't see under. That's no secret. The shower is a dinosaur (monstrous, big, scary) contraption that goes a little something like this:

1. Turn the gas knob at the base
2. Hold a dial down and wind a separate handle three times
3. Hold the dial for 15 seconds
4. Turn the knob to 2 (out of 3)
5. Then turn another lever THEN hot water will come for a shower.

Somehow this finicky machine the size of a labrador dog, standing in water, lights itself on fire with gas and heats my water. I don't get it ... nor do I want to because it's obsolete; I just don't want to die. So, when someone came from my town office today to investigate my smoke claim, OF COURSE it started up like it always does without the smoke. This led to the conclusion that maybe something was in the fire ... like a bug or worse. SICK! I will leave the details to your imagination. It makes me shudder. That's why I shower fast and just can't take a bath in there. I keep imagining a big hairy [insert scary image here] crawling out from under the contraption, or the machine electrocuting me or the gas exploding or a pigeon coming in the window or .....

Vending Machine Coffee

It's getting warmer hooray! I think it may be one of the last times I buy coffee out of a vending machine as a handwarmer.... oh did I mention that you can buy HOT beverages out of vending machines here (just look for the red signs directly underneath the beverage NOT the blue signs)?! I don't know if I had already, but let me tell you it's well worth the dollar you pay to have a warm can of coffee in your pocket that lasts for a couple hours...then you can throw it away since it's disgusting and maybe unhealthy once it gets cold (I tried it). There are vending machines on practically every corner so they have been a lifesaver in trying times of coldness. My favorite coffee is the hot Boss Cafe Au Lait if I'm actually going to drink the coffee; or the biggest size can if I'm just using it as a handwarmer.
Hot can of coffee = $1
Warm Hands and Kimochii (Good Feelings) = Priceless

My First Cookies

I have never made cookies before...isn't that strange? Well, I guess I have to take it back chotto (a little), I have made cookies with friends or family who initiated the deal and told me what to do ... I don't know that it ever entered my head to make cool food items as gifts (mainly because I would probably mess up and have to buy something anyway). Anyhow, so I made my first batch of cookies today, 44 to be exact of peanut butter cookies that I am going to give away for Valentine's Day. Yes, they do celebrate it here although it is different; as far as I know the biggest difference is that girls give chocolate to guys (Don't worry guys have to give it back two-fold in a month in a holiday called White Day). I will explain more about Valentine's Day after it passes to make sure I have my facts straight... but I am really excited about these cookies. Half of them are crispy...well chotto (a little) burned; they were only in for 10 min. I had to try to fix them so I tried to melt chocolate to pour on them but it turned gooey and burned. So then I found that I had powdered sugar and poured it on, since Mary Poppins taught me that sugar helps things (like medicine) to go down in a delightful way, it can surely cure burned cookies. The other half I had to cook for thirty minutes and they are chewy. 30 minutes and 10 minutes for the same cookies?! I don't get baking...it just doesn't make sense. BUT by the time I leave here I will have made friends with the oven, in fact, we'll be best friends. Don't be jealous.

Stories: My New Obsession

Hello, my name is Cassandra, and I'm a kanji-holic and you can be one too. When I first got here I didn't even want to think about trying to learn how to write in kanji. It was too difficult for my brain to even fathom trying...too many squiggles and lines everywhere and it gave me a major headache. Now I am obsessed with kanji. I can't stop studying them. I am not normally an obsessive person, but let me show you how one can become obsessed!! Check out this character:

Just looks like an X right? Well it actually means 'Father'. How do I see father? Imagine 2 swords clashing and Darth Vadar saying "Luke, I am your father." It's father! How awesome is that! (Not my original story but I LOVE it) Yay I can read! How about this one? I love this one, I call her the Lady in the Dress. I see her everywhere:

Her real name is 'Minute' or 'Part' because part of her is missing (Her upper body got chopped off) and she walks quickly not wasting a minute as all women do :) Yay I can read more! Isn't it interesting? I can tell stories all day long and the kanji build on eachother to make better stories that are just waiting for me to tell.

But wait it gets better! Look at the Lady in the Dress now, she is making 'Flour' out of rice! Ha of course she is ... don't women do everything?!

Lol so 'Part' + 'Rice' = Flour (It can actually get EVEN better because the Lady's legs actually mean 'Dagger' and think of all the stories you can make with that knowledge.)

My Japanese Taste Chart

While having something called shabu shabu (meat and cabbage boiled in tea), I realized that I like internal organs. Eww gross!! How dramatically my food tastes have acclimated to Japanese food. Let's relive my 6 month food adventure full of exciting things like horse, whale, internal organs and rawness.

July/August - No fish or seafood. My favorite food was karagge (fried chicken) and Kumamoto ramen (ramen). SHOCK: Wow, I can actually eat this food.

September - Only small amounts of cooked seafood. My favorite food was karashi renkon (fried lotus root and horse radish) and hachimittsu toasto (honey toast). DOUBLE SHOCK: I ate internal organs and liked it.

October - Cooked seafood is good. My favorite food is taiyaki (sweet red beans in a pancake-ish wrapper) and miso soup. SHOCK: I ate octopus.

November - I LOVE cooked fish and most cooked seafood. My favorite food is miso soup. SHOCK: I ate raw horse.

December - I can eat raw fish in small amounts. My favorite food is school lunch :) and caraimo (sweet potato). DOUBLE SHOCK: I ate whale and it's an endangered species.

January - My favorite food is nabe (hotpot). I am tired of miso soup. I still can't eat raw seafood. TRIPLE SHOCK: The one thing I had to throw away (or throw up) at school lunch IN 6 MONTHS was just hot mochi (ball of ground rice; that's it) in soup. WHAT!?