d button

We've not had a flat screen digital television until we moved to Tokyo, so figuring out the remote control has been interesting...

There is a "D" button on there, which when pressed accesses you to "data".

It brings the television program to a smaller screen and the rest of the screen is filled with items like weather, train & airport info as well as other things.

The day after the typhoon, we used the train data to see if the trains that Satoshi needed to ride to work were running.

Since we live in a rather convenient area where there are different train lines running, he decided to take a couple of different train lines to work and ended up just a little late to work in comparison to others who didn't have the option of taking other lines and were SUPER late...there was an article in English here.

Not everyone has access to internet, so this type of access to information is great.

One thing you should know...If there is a typhoon, they usually broadcast in the corner of the screen where the typhoon is.

Also, if there is an earthquake, they also use a corner of the screen to show affected areas.

At the bottom of our remote there are 4 colored buttons, sometimes programs have quizzes and you can participate by putting in your answers according to these colors.

We've not yet won any of the prizes that have been offered for these quizzes, but hopefully, we will one day.

Changing the subject a little, my phone went off on Sunday night alerting us of evacuations in the Kawasaki area, the weird thing was that Satoshi's phone didn't go off at all.

And then the other night, my earthquake alert went off...luckily, we didn't shake with the earthquake in Chiba, BUT we were shaken up by the loud alert...

It's the start of yet another 3-day weekend for us, BUT there is a typhoon (#25) approaching, they say that we'll get some wind and rain, but not sure as to how strong everything will be...hoping it won't be as krazy as Typhoon 24.

There are still many areas all around Japan trying to recover from the almost weekly natural disasters...send us all good thoughts.

Have a nice weekend.