Search

Categories

The Last Day of the Year

13 Jan, 2009

The end of the year is rolling up on us.

In consequence of the global financial crisis, the Brazilian currency, Real, has been devaluated by about 40% against the US dollar.


At the end of September, one Real retained the value of around 70 Japanese Yen, and now it's about 40 JPY.

Naturally, this devaluation must be a boon to those expatriate Japanese business people being stationed in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, allowing them to lead a little bit more comfortable life down there.

This perhaps accounts for the fact that appreciatively more Japanese families appear to be visiting the Amazon during the year-end and New Year holidays--a phenomenon that has not been seen in the past few years.

And many of those Manaus-based expatriate Japanese businessmen, who are not returning to Japan temporarily, are setting off for various must-see landmarks on the continent like Machu Picchu.

pic

The croc with a full stomach from yesterday's delicious aracari dish, making its belly twice as fat as usual.

Shoji Hashimoto

« Prev item - Next Item »
---------------------------------------------

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitionalcorrect CSSLevel Double-A conformance icon, W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0