*The way the Japanese pronounce it. Japanese doesn’t have separate L and R sounds. It has one sound, the ら row (ra, ri, ru, re, ro), which is a quick tap of the tongue against the ridge behind the upper teeth. It’s a bit like the “dd” in “ladder” as pronounced in American English. To English ears it can sound like an R, an L, or a D depending on the word and speaker. The loanword version for ‘Halloween’ is ハロウィン (Harowin).
-explanation by Claude AI
I paid my dues at the JAPEX 2026 stamp exhibition on Saturday, and left after two hours. (The amount of money I spend buying stamps is directly proportional to the time I spend there).
From there I went to an obscure stamp shop on the 4th floor of a nondescript building here in Asakusa called Yuzudo stamp.
The store manager helped me find some Japanese stamps that I had been looking for, for a long time— an 1871 dragon stamp, a few 1872 cherry blossom stamps, and an 1876 old koban stamp.
It was just a few hundred dollars; the weak yen helps a lot, and I would pay 1.5x or 2x that if I had to buy them online. (Or that is what I told myself.) Anyway, I came away very happy with my purchases.
Then it was back to the hotel to chase away the jet lag with a little Starbucks pour-over origami coffee.
Early evening I ran out to the Yodobashi Camera department store in Akihabara to take advantage of the very last day that foreigners can get the 10% local consumption tax right in the store. Starting tomorrow on Nov. 1, the 10% tax has to be paid and an onerous process of claiming it back at one’s departure airport out of Japan kicks in. Aw.
Those watches caught my eye (based on the famous One Piece, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda). The crocodilian dinosaur is a Kaprosuchus. It lived 100 million years ago and galloped on land to catch small dinosaurs with its ferocious teeth.
The De Lorean from the Back To The Future movies is a special edition, highly detailed little model offered by toymaker Takara Tomy.
