A quick word about technology...

As I mentioned earlier, we do have a temporary tv in our apartment that only tunes Japanese programming. While it likely is good for my Japanese skills to listen/watch it periodically, it's a tough way to pass the time.

So before coming to Tokyo, we purchased a Slingbox. I am an Olympics junkie - I love watching all the marginal, fringe sports that you only see every four years - team volleyball, handball, track cycling, water polo, etc. Without getting into the technical details, I spent the rainy period from Saturday through Sunday watching NBC's Olympics coverage on my laptop thanks to the greatness of the Slingbox. And since I'm now much closer to the Olympics (geographically speaking), I was able to watch most of it live the last couple of days. For example, I was able to watch the US gold medal volleyball and basketball which probably came on in the middle of the night there. Yes, I was watching them on a 8" window on my laptop, but the quality was very good considering the picture was coming across the internet from almost 7,000 miles away in Dallas.

And the Vonage box is also proving to work very well.

In short, technology is great.