Race ya, Michael Phelps

Here's the next winner of the 100m butterfly at the Special Olympics:


According to Yuki, the sea turtle had a traumatic encounter with a shark but thanks to some sympathetic engineers, Papa's got a brand new flap...er, flipper.

The turtle story was broadcast on NHK, the PBS of Japan. No, that's not quite right. People in Japan actually watch NHK. Plus, everyone here has been bothered by the NHK guy coming to your house to collect "donations."

I watch NHK for the dubbed nightly news but usually I don't pay attention to Japanese TV. Whatever Yuki is watching, I'll watch. Recently, that has amounted to just early morning talk shows. Yuki's got her nose stuck in her textbook so there isn't much time for TV. The one program we watched recently showed a lot of wacky/horrific news clips. If your perception of the world was informed only by this program, you'd think that:

• the preferred method of suicide in China/Thailand/South Korea is jumping off a tall building;
• taxi drivers hate bicyclists;
• only bizarre robberies occur at convenience stores.