Greetings from Japan, where it's considered good luck if a bird poops on you. What a country!

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No time for a post of any true merit this week. The delicate balance between doing things and having time to write about them tilted against my blogging this weekend. We went to Tokyo on the Shinkansen! (Bullet train.) The fastest shinkansen (which we took because why go unless you go all the way) travels at around 240 km/hour. That's around 145mph. That's fast. It was great. That crazy Tokyo nightlife! (We were in bed by 8:30, exhausted.) We had a great time, and you'll hear about it at some point.

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Things we will miss about Japan, episode 2:

Three little letters. NHK. It's the PBS of Japan, and like all things in Japan, it's superior. Or it's at least different enough to be great. The kids programming is awesome. It is of course based on PBS kids programming, so it's just as charming and clever as Sesame Street or Electric Company. However it's made in Japan, so it's smaller and more efficient.

We saw a crawl on CNN that Youtube.com had removed a bunch of Japanese videos, and we were crestfallen that our one link to NHK when we return to the US was drying up.

Never fear. Here's a taste. Be warned that the Algorithm March, and the complementary Algorithm Exercises (available separately), are completely addictive. There are several incarnations shown on NHK. I posted this one because it has the translation supertitles, along with the Japanese for you.





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And here is a neighbor kid and myself giving it a try. No ninjas here, sorry. The more detail oriented of you will notice that I pooch it at the end. I was too busy having fun to be totally algorithmic. More practice!



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Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass.

Source: (Japanese Proverb)


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