Blast from the past!

Heeheehee! Sorting through some old drafted emails today, I discovered this from last year!

It was supposed to have been posted sometime mid June, but somehow slipped through the net!

Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Takes me back to Japan! LOL!

Anyway, on with the post...


Ta Da!!!

Back to plain old blogging on Aliental now that I've more or less finished my Japan blog http://aliental-in-japan.blogspot.com and my photos over at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliental - Still got a bit of tidying up to do on both of them (Going to add some pictures on Aliental in Japan if I can do it without screwing up the layout and still have titles and descriptions to add for most of the photos on Flickr)

Feel free to have a look and point out any glaringly obvious mistakes I've made. There's bound to be a few...hehehe! :D

By the way, has anyone else had any problems with their blogs recently? It seems to take a few days after posting before they show up on the site when it used to be instantaneous and the text telling you how many comments for a post there are no longer reflects the correct number.

Anyway back to what this post was originally going to be about before I started ranting...

While I was in Japan I was intrigued to know who the people were that appeared on the ¥1000, ¥5000 and ¥10,000 notes (Series E for those who really know their Yen)

I asked Phil:

Me: "Hey Phil, who are the people on the ¥1000, ¥5000 and ¥10,000 notes?"

Phil: "(O_o)???"

I even asked Akimi at Brian Brew:

Me: "Hey Akimi, who are the people on the ¥1000, ¥5000 and ¥10,000 notes? Is the one with the strange hair Brian?"

Akimi: "(O_o)???"

Yes I know that Akimi look s exactly like Phil, but you try and do any better using only the characters that you find on a standard keyboard. If you're that bothered print the page up and draw longer hair and a hat on the second face.

After extensive research (Ok. I came across it by accident in a guide to Sapporo that I'd picked up in the tourist information hut in Odori Park which also had a very useful bit about Hokkaido only dialect!) I find out who these elusive people are and introduce them to you below:


¥1000 - Hideyo Noguchi: A prominent bacteriologist who discovered the agent of syphilis disease in 1911.

¥5000 - Higuchi Ichiyō: Is the pen name of author Higuchi Natsu (also known as Higuchi Natsuko)

¥10,000 - Fukuzawa Yukichi: An author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and political theorist.

...So there you have it. It wasn't Brian of Brian Brew fame after all.

Anyone interested in Yen in general can find out some amazing facts (like the existence of a ¥2,000 note (Released as Commemorative series D) and that the ¥500 coin is made up of 72% copper 20% zinc and 8% nickel) on the Wikipedia page below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yen

P.S. If anyone has a ¥2,000 note that they wouldn't mind parting with (in exchange for cash of course!) I'd love one for my collection!

:D