An Extra Nickel And A Parking Lot Penny

 Some weeks ago I found myself at a local store procuring a needed item.  I was using cash as in this case, the timing of the purchase along with the event would make it highly suspect as to what I had done and when I had done it if I had used a credit card (a fancy way of saying perhaps I failed to plan). The item, when rung up, came up to X dollars and 99 cents.  I put in my appropriate amount of cash.

Instead of getting a penny back, as I have for my entire life, I got a nickel back.  The screen read "Total tendered:  $X.05".

Welcome, I realized, to the world of the life without the penny.

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This was not the first time I had seen this, of course.  "Exact change is appreciated" comes up more and more at stores that accept cash.  I had at least one cashier dig out of the previously known as "penny jar" to make up the difference.  I had another cashier do as I had seen here, effectively enter an overpayment as "received" so they could give me a nickel.

I wonder how long until "the penny jar" becomes an archaic phrase, to be trotted out in movies about previous eras where the young of that day will look and marvel.

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Japan, interestingly is still very much a cash society. Like us, they have small change:  1, 5, 10, 50, 100 Yen coins (also 500 Yen coins, but those are not nearly as common).  Like us, Japan has tax on everything.

Japan takes their small change very unseriously in one sense: the 1 yen coin, for example, is made of aluminum and is considered virtually useless.  For a traveler, they collect like pocket lint if you spend enough time in a combi-ni (convenience store).

For better or worse, they seem to have come up with a unique solution.  1 Yen and 5 Yen coins are apparently the most desirable to place in offering boxes at Shinto Shrines and Buddhist temples.  

It certainly helps clean out the pockets at the end of a trip.

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This past week as I was crossing a parking lot, I stumbled across a beat up penny in the parking lot.

The penny was scarred and had some kind of gunk on parts of it - but still clearly a penny, so I picked it up and popped in the cup holder of my car to allow it to dry.

While pennies may be disappearing, a penny saved is still truly a penny earned.

A Year Of Haiku (VIII): Confusion

"Winter or Springtime?"

the daffodils ask, bathed in 

snow and sun and blooms.

2026 Japan: Tokyo At Large

 Because we spent most of our time training, I do not have a lot of "tourist" pictures to show of Tokyo proper.

The view from our hotel room.  The building in the center sits squarely in front of Mt. Fuji:

At night:

A street not too far from our hotel:

The trees are light up, I think, to replicate cherry blossoms:

Tokyo Tower from Asakusa:

We have been to Asakusa, including Sensoji, several times (here, here, and here) so I did not take many pictures there (we went on our annual shopping expedition for tabi, obi, sword supplies, and souvenirs):

However, the nearby Shino Shrine was preparing for Setsubun, the last day of the Lunar Winter.  There were several stalls selling food.  

We tried amazake, which is a sweet fermented drink from rice which is non-alcoholic.  It was delicious!

(As a note, it was lucky we went when we did.  The next day on Sestsubun there were 15,000-20,000 people here!)

The temple lit up.  We suspected the lanterns were sponsored by local businesses:

Lanterns with The Great Wave off Kanegawa, painted by Hokusai:

Leave it to me to find the rabbit:

2026 Japan: Dinners (III)

 A third set of Japanese dinners.

A restaurant near our hotel.  I do not know that it had a particular speciality.

Starters:  Pickles and fish:

Also a starter:

This was billed as a "Korean Salad".  I was very excited, as this was the first "salad" I had in a week:

Maguro (Tuna):

Miso Karaage:  Japanese fried chicken.  In this case, the batter included miso.  It was unbelievably good:

It was in fact so good that we went there for our closing dinner!

This time I had Oden, a one pot dish consisting of broth and various boiled ingredients.  It included fish cake, boiled egg, chicken, potato, and lotus root:

More maguro... 

...and more karaage.

Our dessert this night was a strawberry cake to celebrate a birthday:

For our last night, The Ravishing Mrs. TB and I went to...Italian food.

Pasta with smoked salmon, lemon, and clams:

And a soft caramel ice cream dessert!

The Ranch: A Contract

 We are in contract.

The buyer that made the original low offer last year came back with our counteroffer price.  It is, over all, the contract that we were asking for.  Contingencies should fall off this week; closure should be sometime near the end of April. 

The fact that - up to the time we received the offer - I had only booked trips through April - is not lost on me.

Kindly enough, The Ravishing Mrs. TB made a trip back with me this past weekend to review things and take a look at what we are keeping to size up a storage locker.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have very mixed feelings about the whole matter.

If anything, the realism of the past two years is enough to convince me - or really any sane person - that this "divided attention" scheme does not work.  As The Ravishing Mrs. TB pointed out, home maintenance and being a landlord are two of my least favorite things, and both are things that - over the past two years (five years, really) I have had to practice to some extent.  And it is not as if we are even really "there" anymore: the house is completely empty, and my visits are pretty much to see that we have no new leaks or critter issues.  

There is certainly no sense of "living there", the illusion I granted myself from 2020-2023 when I could spend a week there at at time.

On the other hand, of course, it remains as beautiful and rooted in my family history as ever.

What happens next?  Well, we still have some equipment to sell and a barn to empty (via estate sale or mass "come and take it"; there is almost nothing I can store and/or use at this point) and our own items to store.  The Cowoby and Young Cowboy will move their things off the property, Uisdean Ruadh will move to his next home.  By my last trip in mid-April, I anticipate there will literally be nothing for me to do except walk an empty house, cabin and barn for a check, walk the property one last time, see my Aunt and Uncle, and turn in the keys.

And after that?  I told The Ravishing Mrs. TB this was my "biggest" thing:  I simply cannot imagine an "after that" at this point.  Yes, there will not be as many trips and yes, the concern of getting a phone call for an unexpected issue or repair will be gone, but so will what for many years I had thought my future would be.

That was okay, she suggested.  For now, perhaps simply being done for a bit will be enough.

A Year Of Kindness (VIII): Do Unto Others

 

We often think of kindness of something that we are doing for others; I wonder if we ever think that it is something we do for ourselves as well?

"Do unto others what you would have them do unto you".  How often, when I am doing unto others, do I think how I would like it if they did the same thing unto me?  How often do I feel justified when I pop off a smart remark instead of remaining silent or contributing something useful?  How often do I let my anger at an inconvenience to me remind me of the times that I have inconvenienced others?

How often do I reflect on the fact that how people respond to me may, in part, be a result of how I respond to them?

Yes, I know.  People are in fact mean and can be cruel and not everything is a reaction to me:  people have their own battles and struggles going on and sometimes we are casualties in dramas we have no idea are even going on.  But I am not responsible for that.

Kindness is a real and practical way for us to practice what Christ says here.  By treating others as we would be treated, we demonstrate the kindness of Christ - who, after all, treated us with more consideration than we could ever treat Him.

On Memories And The Real World

FOTB (Friend-Of-This-Blog) Old AFSarge at Chant du Depart (and who invariably posts great things - if you do not follow him, you should) wrote a post which I found strangely moving entitled Old Times, Good Times.  It is worth a read; the very short version is it is a walk down memory lane based on a photo from his own childhood and history/story behind it.

From the post: 

"As I get older, I remember times like that more and more.  I can remember the smell of the smoke from the sap being boiled, the wood waiting to go into the fire, the mud, the snow.  The spring sunshine just starting to make the days a little more pleasant after a long winter.

I remember my grandfather, not a man to express his feelings in words, more by deeds.  My Dad, always trying to teach us boys not to be idiots, he had his work cut out for him with me!  Mom and Gram in the kitchen, cooking and/or baking something."

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That post - those words - resonate with me on a couple of levels.

One is simply the remembering of times long ago, something made more real by the fact that - sooner or later - a place I have a great many childhood and adult memories of, The Ranch, will pass to other hands.  In visiting my parents' house, I have the memories of myself as an adult and Na Clann when they were children, largely suburban children in a forested wonderland.  In visiting my Aunt and Uncle's house - the house that belonged to my Great Aunt and Great Uncle - I have my own boyhood memories, of chickens and walking through a barn filled with all kinds of weird and wonderful things, of watching my dad change his oil and going with him and my Great Uncle to burn brush in the Winter, of family reunions and sitting in my Dad's lap driving the Ford 9N tractor.

Is it fair to call them simpler times? Perhaps, although I am sure to adults living in those times, they likely seemed no simpler than my life today.  Much of what for us is automated was for them manual, meaning more time spent doing things.  You could not have anything you wanted drop shipped to your door step within a day, so you made do with what you had and what your local retailers had.  The health issues we consider resolvable today were not then; we take cancer cures and artery cleanouts for granted when in those days they were death sentences.

The second thing that resonates with me is just the noticing of details.

Modern life, in that aspect, does a number on us.  For many or most of us, our lives are largely defined by the buildings we work in.  Our time outside is a walk from the house or apartment to the car, from the car to the office or light commercial building or industrial site or store we work at, and then the reverse when we go home.  Too often what we see or experience of The Real World is seen through glass or screens, temperatures only experienced in the moments where we do not have climate control.  Communications with others - especially significant others, like friends or family - are too often words on a glowing screen or the odd electronic voice through a phone call. Food is both abundant - and the same; we have strawberries all the time instead of in season.  

One could argue we have gained fresh (but not necessarily good) fruit and on-time delivery at the cost of our souls.

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Am I calling for some kind of return to some sort of pre-Modern era?

Not necessarily, no.  I do enjoy climate control.  And frankly, the health benefits alone in that so many formally fatal diseases are now treatable and curable are, in my mind, a pretty strong reason to be thankful.

But it does make me ask two things of myself:

1)  Am I creating those memories for others that were created for me?  Arguably in our transient world of commercialism and virtual reality (instead of in-person reality), it is harder than ever to get the sort of Real World memories that are not things like shows we watched or games we played.

2)  Am I taking time to appreciate the world in its beauty and complexity as I can? Do I look at the sunrises and sunsets for a moment instead of rushing to my car?  Do I rejoice and even look wistfully at the clouds and rain (outside my window right now), or consider them a nuisance to be moved through as quickly as possible?  

Do I enjoy and make use (in that sense) of the Real World, or is it simply a place that I inhabit?