journal features

recycle shops

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2020.08.26

Tonight we went to a "recycle shop", which is the Japanese name for a store carrying used stuff. We found both a washing machine and fridge that we liked. Mari's checking out another location run by the same people down in Kawasaki tomorrow. These people specialize in larger fridges that are pretty difficult to find used. Oddly, standalone dryers seem to be disappearing from the market. I suspect that the habit for modern homes to have a bathroom that doubles as a dryer is the reason. Our new place (assuming we get it) doesn't have that feature, being 25 years old. So we're trying to find a standalone dryer instead of relying on one of the all-in-wonders that don't seem be great washing machines or dryers.

I've told the kids they can have beds when I see some "A's" on report cards. I wonder if there are "A's" on Japanese report cards. Might be a long wait, guys....

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)