Reading Japanese is the soporific to end all soporifics. Witness me in bed and asleep at midnight yesterday after a 7 pm Pepsi that should have kept me awake for twelve hours. But Pepsi was followed by a good two hours of Karin, and between the tiny fonts and the unknown hanzi, I was yawning by 10. Is still a glorious farrago of Immortals and dragon kings and pearl spirits and Great Western Mothers. I shall have a happy month rereading the thing.

OTOH my faithful Wordtank grows a little cranky, now it's past its eighteenth birthday, and I know not where I can get another. Well I do know-- online, sight unseen, for hideous prices plus hideous duty and GST and PST. Why does no one on this continent sell gaijin-friendly Wordtanks? Why is it all Casio electronic dictionaries aimed at the native Japanese?