It’s really amazing to me that you can live in the middle of a city hit by major flooding, caused by “the worst rain in 80 years”, and have no idea until friends from the states email you asking if you’re ok. We’re up on a pretty huge hill, so if our neighborhood was to flood, it would likely be the Apocalypse anyway. Still, I take the metro bus (like the green bus covered in water from all the pictures) every day to work and pass right through the area that was hit by flooding and I still barely noticed it. This morning there was a large area of low lying land that looked more like a lake than usual, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the roads. It wasn’t until my trip home when I saw that most of the water had cleared away leaving lots of rubbish and a few passengers pointed and chattered, though what they said I don’t know. Looking at the pictures online, you’d think the whole of Istanbul had been leveled under flood waters, which just goes to show that a photo doesn’t always tell the whole story.

Finding fun in Tokyo without any cash is a constantly evolving creative challenge.

Finally, an episode out on time!  Ever since I made it back to the States I’ve had trouble keeping things on schedule.  Before I went to Japan I was always at a two week lag from real time, and when I was with the crew on the road I was experiencing things as they happened, but at all times I had to be thinking a few weeks ahead to do my job as producer.  About 60% of my time is spent as editor thinking about what did happen, and about 40% of my time is spent as executive producer/director thinking about what will happen, and the result is that I spend a clean 100% of my time confused.  I was too inexperienced when starting this project to know why production and planning staff are almost always separate, but I think I’ve got the gist of it after living for a few months in this scheduled haze.

This week also marks the debut of our newest musical contributor: Tettix!  I’ve been listening to Judson Cowan’s music for years, both in his current incarnation and under his previous handle of Cicada.  His work has been featured in a number of creative spots, including this Boing Boing short.  It gives me no shortage of pleasure to be editing to his music, in this episode The Graves of Good Humans from the startling Technology Crisis II.  I hope to use a few more of Tettix’s tracks before Season 2 is up, but in the meantime check out all his albums at www.tettix.net or purchase his songs on iTunes!