notes from meltdown central

Call that a Puma Mast Challenge ?  Now this is what I call seriously getting up the pole.
Here, as JapanToday.com informs us, we see "performers demonstrating acrobatic stunts on top of ladders, which is known as "Dezome-shiki", as part of Tokyo Fire Department's New Year Fire Review held at  Tokyo Big Sight on Tuesday morning (that's today folks !)  About 2.700 professional firefighters and members of community-based fire companies in Tokyo and 137 fire vehicles, helicopters and ships were mobilized for the annual demonstration." For more photos, visit JapanToday.Gallery.

Now you see, that's why I really loved living in Tokyo.  Imagine being rescued from the 36th floor by one of these guys !  (something that I don't really think the Tower Hamlets Fire Department would be up to, quite frankly, which is why we  have to keep practising walking down 36 flights of stairs, an experience which does a lot for the thigh muscles but can really wipe out your afternoon).  And it's dead symbolic too, because it's now official that of all the world currencies now laughing at the pound, it's the yen that has shown the biggest change - from 220 to the pound as recently as last summer, to a much more bracing 140 to the pound today.

What can we learn from this ? I have no idea.  But just look at those firemen go !  Puma challengers, eat your heart out. 

   

Here's a question for you - how many times a day on your way through the grim, grey commute do you say No to, or otherwise refuse to acknowledge the existence of, someone in a fluorescent parka shoving something free you don't want in your face ?
This happened to me four times this morning.  Today is not officially Blue Monday (the most depressing Monday of the year) but judging by the number of freebie-distributors, someone must have thought we needed cheering up.  The orange-clad guys shoving out leaflets about the Puma Ocean Racing Challenge evidently thought so.   But did they really think the best way to do it was to offer us the chance to dress up in silly orange uniforms and

There was a brief period last October when I started saying yes to the guy with City A.M. on the grounds that things were falling apart so fast, and the  news was so exclusively finance-based, that his paper became for a time essential reading.  I think I shocked him this morning by not only saying yes to his paper (when everybody else was whizzing past grim-faced) but also taking his picture.  

This whole giving-you-things-you-don't-want scenario is symptomatic of the way the nation seems to be behaving of late.  In all the womens' shops now, the discounts have reached the point where the floors are awash with clothing that people have simply dragged off the rails, decided against, and dropped, apparently not worth the shop staff's time to pick it up and offer it for sale at an even lower price.  What really will be next ?  People being dragged into shops and plied with five pound notes ?  The truth is, I am no more likely to buy something hideous when it's offered to me for twenty pounds than I was when I saw it offered at forty pounds, and when it gets down to ten pounds, everyone is apparently agreeing with me that it's actually worthless and confirming that I was right not to buy it in the first place.    I also hear that banks will soon be charging negative interest on savings accounts.   Now, where can I find a heavily discounted mattress to stuff my cash into ?