Crisp

It's a crisp morning here in Tokyo, and I'm feelin rather chipper, albeit suffering from a cold which I think I must have picked up from Jay.
Last Sunday we did our first 15km run around the palace, and in pretty good time too - 1 hr 16 minutes. That's about an average of 5 mins per km, which we need to get down to around 4 mins. A big task, yes, but we have about 4 months to do it, so I'm pretty confident.
The Yen continues to strengthen against the Pound. Last night it was 137 Yen to the Pound, which is a 13 year high. Feel sorry for my parents to be coming over in this situation, and if only we could have reversed our visit to the UK to this year, and they to last year, it would have been much better. Oh well...
There seems to be doubts over the government's economic stimulus package. The plan had been to give everybody 11,000 Yen to spend as they wished, but the Finance Minister is now saying it's unlikely to work, so it may be shelved. Personally I thought it was a bad idea, as even though it'd be nice to have the extra cash, I think most people would have just saved it, which defeats its point.
I was speaking to a Private Equity bod the other day, and he said even though the current climate is tough, it's also a great opportunity to buy distressed companies at low prices, and build them up over a period of up to 10 years. Luckily, his company has a huge amount of cash available for such action, so that they are not solely reliant on financing from banks. This makes me think it's a good time to do some canny investing of my own, but its difficult to judge when to get in, as the markets are so volatile. One option is to buy sterling now, as I imagine it will strengthen in the future, but with its continued decline, again its when to take the plunge.