News Otaku

You might have noticed a slowdown in postings lately (although I’ve kept up with the daily pics), and that’s probably in part due to an unfortunate new addiction: political news. I’ve never really been a political news hound, but for some reason, I’ve become quite the junkie of the US Democratic race (even though I’m Canadian). I subscribe to TIME (the Asian edition), and the articles (and essays) I tend to go to first are the ones covering the primaries. Add to that CNN and BBC World coverage. Add to that the book I’m enjoying at the moment: Al Franken‘s brilliantly hilarious LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM: A FAIR AND BALANCED LOOK AT THE RIGHT (I’m listening to the audiobook on my iPod during my daily commute, and I highly recommend it as Franken himself does the reading, and he’s great at it). Also, although I’ve been totally out of touch with Canadian politics since moving to Japan, I found out this week that the CBC keeps a contant stream of its nightly TV news mainstay, THE NATIONAL, and I’ve started watching that while I do my surfing. Nice to see Peter Mansbridge again.

Oh, and as a pleasant to surprise to me, I’ve been keeping up with the Japanese studies (to attain my goal of passing the second level test at the end of the year). Need more time in the day.