Erwin threw this youtube clip at me yesterday as we talked about the little currency exchange predicament. This is a satirical interview about the “inner workings” of the so called subprime crisis. Had never heard of Bird and Fortune before, but I laughed so hard at this one. They’re comedians who seem to specialize in satirical interviews based on events taking place at the time. They’ve made absolutely hilarious stuff on the Iraqi war as well.

It’s a bit comforting I admit, to laugh at what’s causing so much trouble for oneself. I’ll have to try that more often. Heartfelt thanks, Erwin.

I whined about mentioned the yen and its happy little adventure up in the clouds in an earlier post roughly a month ago (Oct 28th) and figured I’d post an update. Or rather, today was “a first” — and not a happy first, either — so I wanted to whine about mention it again. If you remember the graph, it described the yen per swedish crown (”Yen/SEK”) and the curve slowly but surely fell downwards. This means that, when I posted that, I was paying 40% more than I was when the yen/SEK was at its peak (17.8), back in ~July. The following graph shows how things have gone since the day of that post and until today:

Now, the hilarious part about this…

“As soon as it jumps above 13.0, I’m going to withdraw money.” — I decided on this back after posting the previous post. If you look at the graph, it more or less rubs its genitals against the 13.0 line but it just never takes the stride. So frustrating. My thinking here is in any case that I am going to gradually withdraw money even at “low” exchange rates, as soon as the yen is increasing. My thinking is that if I do this, I will not end up having to withdraw money when it’s at a super-low rate, like now. Unfortunately for me it just never went above 13.0, so I now have 2,000 yen in total, and rent payment day is this Monday — and the rent is nearly 40,000 yen.

As for “the first” mentioned above, the yen per crown is now for the first time below 11.0, down at 10.93 yen/crown.

At this point, I’m no longer paying 40% more than I used to. I’m paying 64% more than I used to. So if your rent is, say, $400 a month and this happened to you, you’d suddenly look at the bill and read “$656″ and wonder whatever happened to your vacation plans. Or, to your savings, for that matter. Your electricity bill? Let’s say $50 normally; now? $82. And so on and so forth. Can you see the reason for my whining about mentioning the yen now?

I wish I hadn’t picked the one country in the world which would “miraculously” stay afloat while the rest of the economies in the world started tumbling.

http://www.3news.co.nz/News/NewsDisplay/tabid/209/articleID/18823/Default.aspx

Funny! I love this world sometimes.

When blogs first came around, I didn’t get it. At all. I mean, who other than self-important, self-absorbed people would sit and write about themselves? I made a livejournal blog at some point, which I promptly forgot about, then I made a new one (forgot the password for the old one) because people around me kept poking me, telling me to create one. “It’s fun!” they said, and I thought “What is?” If I wanted to write I’d just write. If I wanted other people to read, I’d send it to them. It felt like a pointless way to pretend to be an author. Most of the time, nobody read what you’d written anyway. Then I started writing myself, and as I kept going, I realized it wasn’t that bad at all but I was still a little hesitant about the concept…

There is the ever present concern of forgetting that the public is there and that things you say can be used against you. Corporations google employee hopefuls and find their blogs and decide that they don’t want people “of that character” in their companies, and I’m sure there are many other variations of the “the private in the public” becoming a tangible problem. Some argue that people are willingly putting their entire lives out there for anyone interested, while others argue that privacy is a growing concern that mustn’t be taken lightly.

Be that as it may, I grew quite fond of blogging and even set up a blog on my own domain name fairly quickly after I got into it. I enjoyed writing without a real purpose, and I enjoyed reading what others wrote. Time limited my presence in the blogosphere (I can’t say that word with a straight face, though, but give me a few years) but for the most part, I found myself spending quite a bit of time reading what others had to say.

February 28th, 2006, I wrote a response to an article on Chicago Tribune (story long since removed) in which the author declared blogs a “dying concept”. They didn’t get it either, though their web site has, in the left menu, a link to “blogs” so I reckon they’ve changed their minds in the 2½ years that have passed since. In their defense, I believe they were looking at blogs from a pure business perspective, though I think their declaration has failed there as well (no figures to back that statement, so don’t quote me on that one).

The point of blogs that I saw back then is pretty similar to how I see it now. I still think of blogs as a way to express what you wouldn’t normally be able to express, more in-depth than you would normally be able to be without getting long-winded and boring in the eyes of those around you (after all, with blogs they can simply stop reading when they feel like it, but with letters or in discussions, they don’t have that option without being at least a bit rude).

Conclusively, I’d like to see some of you people write again. Those of you who haven’t blogged in months, and who think noone’s wondering how you’re doing. I am, sincerely wondering (Erwin, you there and alive still? :P). I may not comment on a lot of you people’s posts, but I read them, and I am happy to hear from you, even if it’s as “unpersonal” as by passively reading your blogs.

Now that the yen is like the eagle and the swedish currency is like the mole, I’m trying everything I can to not spend money unnecessarily. Today, my school had been gracious enough to arrange for a free medical exam for the new students at the school — something that they normally require you to deal with yourself, with money out of your own pocket. It’s not a lot of money in the end, but it’s money I could use elsewhere.

I had circled today’s date on the calendar.

I had written 9.05 on today’s date on the calendar.

I had circled 9.05.

Every indication that I should be at school at 9.05 am, instead of 1.15 pm as usual.

And I woke up at 9.00am, realizing that there was no way for me to get there on time, and the teachers had explicitly said that we must be there before 9.10am as that is when the group will be leaving school and head for the medical exam place. To get to school would have taken me at least 40-45 minutes, so I was, as they say, shit out of luck.

So now I have to go pay for this exam after all. Aurgh…

Update: turns out the exam is actually not the one they wanted me to take, but another exam. And the good news is that they told me they will reimburse me for the exam as long as I grab a receipt. *happy* And when I asked about that other exam, they said “Oh that… aw, screw it, just forget about that one.” *snicker*

It’s my girlfriend’s birthday today. She’s finally of legal age. (Just kidding. :D)

In any case, be wild and crazy and tell ‘happy birthday’ to ‘a friend’s girlfriend whom you have no idea who she actually is’. Once in a lifetime opportunity. She does read this blog. If I get 5 comments or more I’ll eat lots of ice cream even though it’s cold outside.

(This entry was brought to you by Caffeinated Hungover Swede in Japan Who Will Wake Up Tomorrow Wondering Why He Wrote Such An Odd Post Incorporated.)

So… I knew this would happen. I totally knew this would happen. But I kept thinking, you know, “it’ll happen, I’ll twitch, I’ll panic, it’ll be lots of running in circles, then it’ll just return to normal and I’ll figure out a way to keep things on level ground.” Hah.. yeah.

What’s going on? The yen is speeding ahead of the other currencies in the world at a pace I didn’t know was possible. What does this mean? The USD, the euro, and, more importantly (for me), the swedish crown, are all steadily losing their value against the yen.

(Yen/SEK is not “yen per second”, but “yen per swedish crown)

The above is a *very inofficial* diagram based on my own plotting of the yen versus the swedish crown as I’ve lived here — I’ve kept good track of it since all my cash is in Sweden, which means that whenever I withdraw money from an ATM, the amount of money I actually “lose” from my account varies depending on the above chart. As you see, there’s a nice downward curve there at the end, starting at the end of this summer, and, well, so far not ending at all.

I thought this was something “local” at first — as in, local to Sweden, and/or to Japan, but it seems everyone around me is talking about this now, and even the folks back home are saying that the market is looking hairy. I’m sure you guys have felt it too one way or another (stockholders, in particular).

It’s no trifling matter, though. I now pay about 44% more for everything that I buy here, compared to this summer. Imagine if your rent, your gas bill (if you have one), your electricity, your groceries, your bus tickets, the alcohol at your bars, cigarettes, gasoline for your car… imagine if all of that, in one single sweep, got 44% more expensive.

What usually cost $1 suddenly costs $1.44. What usually costs $20 now costs $29. What usually costs $50 suddenly costs $72. And the big bad one — rent. My rent here went from something like $210/month to $320/month. A $110 increase. In about 2-3 months’ time. It hurts, lemme tell you.

There are varying theories on why this is happening, some more disheartening than others. We swedes have speculated that this is a temporary deal, because Japan is so extremely dependent on import/export. The yen simply cannot stay stronger than the rest of the world, because the rest of the world will refuse to buy from Japan (the Japanese will want payment in yen, and the rest of the world will not wanna buy at 44% the higher price), especially with companies like Sony and Nintendo who don’t want to fall behind Microsoft in the console competition. If Sony and Nintendo are forced to cut prices by 44% just to keep up, it won’t look pretty on their financial reports.

Then there is the theory which stretches back 7 years or so. One of the women I teach English to told me today that when her daughter went to Sweden (yep, her daughter has lived in Sweden) back in 2001, the swedish crown cost 12 yen. That’s close to where it’s at now, if you take a look at the chart above. According to her, things have simply fallen back from being out of proportion for the last 7 or so years. Since 2001, she claims, the yen has gradually dropped in value against the other currencies and kept dropping steadily until it was what you see if you look at the chart around summertime — 17.88 yen per swedish crown. If I had only known. Well, in hindsight, I’m not sure I’d have done any differently from what I did, but I think I might have at least saved up 1/3rd of my buffer in Japanese currency if I’d realized the yen was so outrageously weak compared to 7 years earlier. Live and learn.

Update: The real reason appears to be panicky international investors;

“The yen’s recent jump, so lethal for Japanese exporters like Sony, was set off by panicky international investors rushing to unwind yen “carry” trades, which had taken advantage of Japan’s low interest rates to borrow yen to invest elsewhere. Reversing those trades means buying back the yen, lifting its value.”
– http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081029/as_japan_earns_sony.html

In any case, now I’m twitchily trying to not spend money on anything if I don’t have to, and I’m also trying to find a(nother) job while studying. It’s quite a pain for me, because I’m a spoiled Swede who’s never ever worked and studied at the same time in the past (student aid and such), but now is not the time to go all “but my studies must not suffer — I cannot allow myself to take time away from them” on myself (they call it “iiwake” over here) and just get to it because I’ll ruin myself otherwise.

Wish me luck. (The next post will probably be about how I lost that job teaching those kids that I wrote about earlier…)

The 4th of October, as I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone while walking across the room I managed to get the far-too-short ethernet cable across my foot which resulted in me literally bashing the modem into the ground. It didn’t survive the trip.

Now, 21 days later, I have a new modem. My landlord didn’t break any new speed records on that one, that’s for sure, but at least he gave it to me for free (initially he said I had to pay money to get a replacement).

Ah well. I’m back. I’ve had a hundred different things I’ve wanted to blog about, but sitting down and writing the entries in a text file just sounded too ambitious for me. In any case, I’m back.

It was my birthday the 24th of September, which I spent in Nara kissing deer. My girlfriend had told me before that I had a present from her parents at their place waiting and yesterday I went there and found out what it was.

Yup. A T.V.

Indeed, a TV. I’m still sort of shocked about it. Now I can watch all those insane shows in peace and quiet. Yatta!

So tell me, do you have occult blood? I’d never heard of this before and at first thought it was a classic case of Engrish. Then I looked it up and it actually exists…

occult blood n.
Blood that is present in amounts too small to be seen and can be detected only by chemical analysis or microscopic examination.
(dictionary.com)

Who would’ve thought that I’d learn new English words (or in this case, expressions, since it’s several words) in Japan.