The end of the year is my least favorite time. End of October is my birthday, and end of November is Thanksgiving, and end of December is Christmas, and all three tend to reinforce and make me feel lonely and isolated. So in hopes of ameliorating that a bit, I just decided to spend some more money.

I got onto CDJapan and ordered the first two Japanese BD's of Asobi ni Iku Yo. The first one is out now, and should ship whenever they get around to it. The second one hits the streets on the 20th, which should be about right for it to arrive on-or-before my birthday. It's also the one that features the lengthy bath by Manami and Aoi, during which the house gets attacked, and in response to which the two of them engage in a serious gunfight while stark nekkid. In the broadcast the bath was thoroughly obscured by steam and the night-time outside was particularly dark, but I have high hopes for a much better view. Not to mention a much larger one. (I'm easily pleased.)

Fedex delivery from Japan is 3 days, so even if they don't fulfill their "usually ships on release date" promise, there's a good chance it'll work out just about right.

Rips of the first BD are already online and, yeah, I've already downloaded them. But I want to see the package art, and anyway, waiting for Fedex to deliver some goodies is fun.

And now for the bad news: the dollar is dropping relative to the yen. (The US dollar seems to be dropping relative to everything.) Each BD cost me Â¥8880 including shipping. At the time I put in the order, that was $106 but it may be even more by the time the order ships and my credit card gets charged.

UPDATE: I'll probably end up getting the third BD, too. Ep 6 has the sauna scene. (I sure am easy to please, aren't I?)

UPDATE: Win 7 comes with a bunch of gadgets that display on the right side of the screen, if you want them to. Usually I just use the clock and the CPU/memory usage meters. But there's also a currency exchange rate gizmo, and right now it says that it's 82.1 yen to the dollar. I'm used to thinking of 95 as being normal, and I know it's been as high as 115.

I'm no forex hound, but I wonder: is this a rapid and recent change (e.g. the last four months) or something that started a lot longer ago? Is there somewhere that offers exchange rate plots without requiring a membership?

UPDATE: Here it is. Looks like it began to fall starting about May, when it was still 94 yen to the dollar. (And in the recent past it peaked at 135 yen to the dollar in 2002.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 05:19 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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