Commemorative coins

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Click here to read it), this year (2009) is the twentieth anniversary of the date that the current Japanese emperor took the throne.
The Emperor and Empress’ 50th wedding anniversary was also this year.

So to mark the occasion, two commemorative coins will go on sale from the Bank Of Japan this November.

These coins are a special gold ¥10,000 coin and a special silver ¥500 coin.

The price to purchase the coins will be ¥80,000 (about US$800) for the ¥10,000 coin or ¥82,000 (about US$820) for both coins.

I have a few mint commemorative Japanese coins for various occasions…but ¥80,000 is too steep a price for a coin in my opinion. If they sell the ¥500 coin alone, maybe I’ll buy one…but not the ¥10,000 coin.

Top: front and back of gold commemorative ¥10,000 coin.Bottom: front and back of silver commemorative ¥500 coin.

Disaster

Every summer we go to a beach resort and stay a few days.
This year we planned to go there from Sunday, August 9 until yesterday (Tuesday, August 11) because all five of us had those days off from work or school clubs.

We checked the weather forecast for those days last week and it said that it would rain a little bit on August 9 and then it’d be nice the rest of the time.
But that’s not how it turned out…

When we arrived at the beach on Sunday, it was a bit cloudy but still nice weather and very hot. So the kids went swimming a bit. If they had known that that’d be their only chance to swim, they would’ve stayed in the water longer.

After they finished swimming, they took a shower and changed their clothes and we went for a walk around.
My second daughter caught a カブト虫 (rhino beetle).

Then it began to rain.

We went back to the room and ate dinner. And we turned on the TV and I checked the weather forecast.
A typhoon was hitting the east coast of Japan! 😦

The forecast said that the typhoon would be gone and the weather would clear up on the afternoon of August 11. The day we we going back home!

And then, while we were eating dinner, an 地震 (earthquake) struck!
The area we were in registered a “level 4 earthquake” on the Japanese shindo earthquake scale. (The Japanese scale goes from 1-7).
It was an unwelcome fright! But luckily it wasn’t strong enough to knock anything down where we were.

The weather forecast was correct. The typhoon stayed the whole time we were there. It ruined our beach trip.
The wind and rain was very strong the entire time we were there. Both the beach and the nearby waterslide pool park were closed.

And then yesterday morning at about 5:30AM, another big 地震 (earthquake) struck! This one had the epicenter in 静岡県 (Shizuoka Prefecture), and registered a “level 6” (out of “7”) there!
Where we were it registered as a “level 4” again. Once again, not big enough to do damage where we were…but big enough to wake us up!
I hate earthquakes!

But we still had fun together. Indoors.
We played games, watched TV, talked, and enjoyed time together.

We planned to take the 6:30PM train home yesterday (August 11).
At about 5:00PM, I noticed that the typhoon seemed to have passed and the weather was clearing up.
Just my luck! The weather was miserable the whole time we were there…and then clears up when were getting ready to leave!

Since we had time, and the storm passed, we took a walk around again.
There were many surfers taking advantage of the big waves brought by the typhoon.

Even though we didn’t get to swim as we planned, we still had a good time.
And as I said, we go to this beach every summer. This was the first time that the weather wasn’t beautiful while we were there.
Hopefully it’ll be nice weather again next year!