Analog Girl

There’s a Guy Clark song I like called Analog Girl, and while I’m not quite the girl in the song, I am pretty simple and low tech.  Ted likes all the gadgets and knows how to use them, but the simpler the better for me.  I’ve never been crazy about talking on the phone and really only used the one I had in the US to talk with Ted.  I don’t have a phone here.  I’ve written before that my digital camera is the size of a deck of cards and it is perfect for me.  I don’t need anything bigger or better.

The one gadget I really do like is my iPod touch. When Ted gave it to me, I thought I could listen to music on it, but didn’t give much thought to the other things it could do.  (I still don’t know all the things it can do.) Since deciding to come to Japan, it has been quite handy.

The two months that Ted was here and I was still in the US, we were able to see and talk every day, using FaceTime and it didn’t cost anything! (In addition to being low tech, I’m also very frugal.) I can check my email or look at the internet anywhere there is wifi.  I listen to music from it more here than I did before. It has google maps so I can see where I am and where I want to go. It has a weather feature, but I have to tell you, iPod weather hasn’t been all that accurate.  Sometimes it shows a sun on the iPod and when I look out, we are having “snow showers”. 

The thing I really appreciate having here is iBooks. Not having a television leaves me lots of time to read. There aren’t many English reading choices here.   IBooks on the iPod is convenient and much easier to carry that a book.  And the books are free! I could pay for books, but there are so many free ones that I doubt I will. I just finished Death on a Rocky Little Island by Lenny Everson. I thought it was going to be a murder mystery and it really wasn’t but it was good.

Ted knew it would be a good gift for me when he gave it to me, even if I didn’t at the time.