Golden Week

This week is Golden Week, a week when many national holidays are grouped together to try and encourage Japanese workers to go on holiday and spend their money (a huge problem for the Japanese government - the Japanese reticence to go on holiday means that the government can't get as much GST off of them). Because every man and his dog goes on holiday in Golden Week causing tourist spots to get overcrowded and hotel prices to soar, I am not going anywhere. I went on the field trip on Monday that I have already talked about, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I had work. Yesterday I went to Honjo to rent some DVDs and to do a spot of shopping. I bought some foods that I can't get in Konoura, such as three blocks of blue cheese and some stewing beef. Then I bought some notebooks, because I love blank notebooks. I love them even more when I get to use them. Cheap thrills. After that I went to Denkodo and impulse bought this:


Yes, I now own a lime green iPod Shuffle 2. It is so cool. I already own an MP3 player which I talked about here. I have had that MP3 player for two years now and although it has served me rather well, and although it is small for a 20GB player, I really wanted to get something that is smaller, so small that I wouldn't even notice it. Also, I have never used the playlist functions of my older player. Thirdly, I didn't want to have a player that is designed to be hung around the neck like so many other mini players, because stuff like that tends to bounce on the fabric of my clothes that is stretched over by bosom as if on a trampoline and hit me on the head. I'm not joking. I have hit myself on the head with a cellphone before simply by running a few steps. Altogether it seemed as if the miniature, no fussy playlists, clip-mounted iPod Shuffle was the choice for me.

I am also thrilled to discover that the sound quality of the iPod is very, very good. It is not the earphones, because I am using old earphones. The bass is especially good. I will still use my old player from time to time because the iPod Shuffle only carries 1GB and has no screen or way of selecting a certain song, but I think that for the most part my new iPod (which I have named Charlie after Charlie Nancy from Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman) will provide my day-to-day music needs.

The DVDs I rented yesterday were Superman Returns, Hellboy, The Producers, The Polar Express, Aeon Flux, Ultra Violet and The Brothers Grimm. I watched the last three last night. The Brothers Grimm was stupid. I don't think I will watch it again. Well, I might skip forward to the part where Heath Ledger 'kisses' Matt Damon and watch that part again, because that was interesting, but the rest of the movie wasn't. Aeon Flux and Ultra Violet are very similar movies. Not my usual fare, but I was in the mood for action movies yesterday so I quite enjoyed them. I have never seen the Aeon Flux animation so I don't know exactly how much the movie differs, but I heard that it is quite different and the original creator was quite upset with the way the live action movie turned out. Ultra Violet was a bit, um, non-sensical. Not to mention un-original. But I liked the colour-changing hair and clothing. I want my hair to turn purple on demand.