My first Halloween

I knew that there'd be a Halloween this friday when I left Tokyo last Tuesday but I wasn't really thinking about it. When Christina told me about it when we were at Kroger for groceries, it was still someone else's job to me.

Then today is a Halloween day and Christina told me again that I'll be the one to open the door for "trick or treat". Then suddenly I was serious and started to wondering how to respond to it. How should I offer candies? How should I greet them? And most of all, do we have enough of candies or too little of them?

Alan wasn't here and Christina left for a dinner. I'm all alone and kids started to bang on the door. I didn't know anything about it so I just stick out the candy  bowls (actually that's full of chocoloates like M&M and Milky Ways) in front of them. Most of kids were kind of shy and took one. I figured then there'd be a ton of candies to be left. I started to hand them more or ask them to pick more than one.  We still had a plenty of them.

Then Alan came home and told me not to let them have more than one. Alan was rigtht. More kids than I started to expect came to pick them up and we were out of them sooner. I learned a lesson. I'd be able to handle it better if I'd lived here. Well, I wasn't

Most of kids are at elementary school ages but some are older than that. Majority wore some sort of costume but some wore none, just ordinary.

Thus at 7:30pm, candies were gone and we had still some knocking on the door if we had turned out the door lights.

It was fun, though. I'd handle them much better if I'd be here next year. 

I'm here in US

I got here yesterday on 10/28 without much of trouble. Two flights involved were delayed for about half an hour but, after all, I met Alan at the airport as scheduled.

Alan looked tired and spoke that way and I'm sorry for that. He said it's the way of life as a public accountant. Well, it's just this season.

It was raining on and off when I arrived in Richmond, VA and kind of chilly, he said. I didn't feel that way when I got off the plane but then I started to feel the same way. That's maybe as I was shuffling around the luggage I had to carry and I'd been indoors most of the time.

At the Kansai aiport, I saw Ouchi-san who said she's just transfered from Tokyo a month ago. She looked happy, that was good for her.

Owada-san  sent me an apology mail for failing to list me. I told her never to mind as I have to rely on her in the future for my listing and status-checking. At least she admitted her failure and she is honest about it. That's good.

I haven't talked with Alan much at all yet. Hope we can talk a little longer tooday.

Nikkei hit 11,000 yen once

I was correct when I said Nikkei would hit 11,000 this week. It did and dipped a little bit at the end of the week but it's OK.
The important thing was it didn't bounce back to 10,000 yen. That's all it counts.
Though the average acted as expected and hoped for, I lost some. What a fool!

So the score is two for good and one for bad; another good thing was I kept some balance for Nasdaq to continue next week.

Right now, I've no feeling about the next week, whether bright or not. At least for Nikkei, there's no reason to think bad except for one variable - the re-election for Japan prime minister. As for Nasdaq, I've no idea at all but is there anything ominous - struggling in Iraq and damage by Isabel?

Nikkei average in the week

As expected, Nikkei average fell by 200 yen at the end of the week and it's going to be the main subject if it passes 11,000 in the next week. If it does, I guess it's not before that long to make 12,000 yen. If, however, it bounces back to 10,000 yen level, it may take a while to make 12,000 yen if it ever makes as there'll be some variants to consider such as re-election of Koizumi and the general election in November.

Nikkei average

I'm damn happy today as Nikkei broke out to 10,900 without making a slight stop at 10,800, which is my hell of a milestone. It's like a dream, given it was below 8,000 once, not long ago. It was dismal then but now I can anticipate more than 11,000 level.
Yet, come to think of it, it was once 12,000. Since then it just slided down like a water shoot at Universal/Orlando. I'm sure there'll be some pull back before going over 11,000 but if none makes mistake, it surely goes there. Or you'd better, man.

Airline stock

Yesterday NWA came back to $10 after a long recess just as other carriers because they made relatively good performance in August. Maybe we can say we're back when they make $20 at least, but I'm not sure when it'll be. Toru-chan, how's your mother? Is she still gaining? I hope so.

Nikkei daytrading

I made a nice little gain and Nikkei held 17,000 yen level. Wish we would be equipped with a better tool, though.

I woke up past 11 am. I knew it would be late for a stock market in Tokyo. Nikkei was up & down about yesterday's level. Softbank made a gap-up and started to fall to close a gap soon. It could climb up from there after a lunch break. I watched MLB as usual and Mariners were struggling 7-7 at the bottom of the 9th against Tampa bay. Ichiro was, as usual, nothing but a flop but somehow other players made an effort for 3 runs in the 10th and Hasegawa managed the last two innings with one run allowed. Definitely Athletics are unreachable; Red sox is the one Mariners shouild beat if there's any chance.

After a lunch break, Nekkei wasn't sure itself about whether it should go up or down. Softbank made some rally but at 14:40, it started to break down past a support level. It was more then 200 yen drop in 10 minutes and I scalped some gain from there. It wasn't bad at all and a nice gain for 10 minutes short play. If there'd be a RealTick level device, though, I could manage more than 50% short gain. (Wishful thinking? Maybe.)

With this, I made back-to-back gains, UFJ and Softbank. As I trade in Nikkei more, I feel the brokers in Japan should cater more to the customer by developing efficient and effective trading tools. It may not be only the brokers' blame but also of Nikkei market management and some bureaucrats in the ministry. There's no equivalent of the Realtick. They ask for a password for every order and log off after fixed time inactivity. It's not possible to act quickly when some breakout/downs occur after, say, 1 hour. I have to log in first for the broker's home. That's alone a drag enough. Then , let's say, you want to buy and sell in 3 minute. It may not be possible to act quickly in that time span as they require a designated password to buy and to sell. Remember that the password is designated, provided by the broker, not the one you like. It's hard to remember even for the user as the password is meant to be. Very unfriendly and discouraging system. And they say it's for the benefit of the customers for the security reasons. Well, they should come up with the better system even though proprietary.

Toru-chan, if you ever go to Halifax, try to visit Mr. Furue, an old friend of mine from ICU. I understand he must be sort of everyone-knows Japanese there, who's been there since mid '70s.