28. Eddie's Computer System
While mastering the language, Eddie is busy setting up a computer for the Shack.
He has kept close watch on developments of the home computer and brought with him from New York an Altair 8800 kit, which he sets up in Ryo's room.
Before this, Eddie renovates Ryo's shack. Ryo considers Eddie's reappearance a great blessing - not because she loves Eddie and not because he resumed the good sex, both of which she appreciates - but because he pays her existence from now on. She agrees with all suggested improvements to household once he explains each.
He arranges a 3-month renovation, during which Ryo, he and Yuko live in nearby inn. It takes the one-story shack down to ground, replacing the old wood horizontal-slat walls with light blue stucco cement, a modern outer door and sash windows, but preserving the indoor traditional Japanese decor of tatami floor, sliding white paper screen inner panels and room separations. A kitchenette is added to one's right on entering, and the bathing pool slightly enlarged, and the old honeybucket toilet hole is replaced by modern commode with bidet for the women. Room temperature in winter is by electric heating and in summer by blowers.
At center front room, the same square depression is continued but instead of just for cooking, a table put over it, like the kotatsu 20 years before in Occupied Japan so Eddie can sit late into night, legs dangling over the edge and type into his computer or read and study with a night desk lighting. This way he does not disturb Ryo or Yuko who sleep in the inner rooms.
By 6 months into new life with Ryo, Eddie has set up his computer system. One important use for it is a word processing program. This speeds editing and rewriting. Also with the memory programs, Eddie constructs banks of knowledge - such as mathematical functions like square roots and logs, scientific definitions, rules and laws, and the huge body of knowledge contained in latest Encyclopedia Britannica, which while he was in the Bronx, with Nina's help, he had put on tape. And he also has access to the worldwide web (WWW) internet which is like having a super Roget’s Thesaurus.
That for his writing and study. Before, in the medical school library, Eddie also pioneered an early information highway using short-wave radio. And he had spoken much with Stan who obtained a shortwave wireless license, which Eddie was able to also get in Tokyo. And using that as a wireless route he and Stan set up an early typed communication. This turns out to be of great use to Eddie in his studies because he taps into the knowledge made available by Stan and secretary Miss Prissy in the Bronx.
By the end of first year in Tokyo at Ryo's now Modern Shack, Eddie has all basic needs - a comfortable study atmosphere, good steady sex, and a computer system for writing, accessing knowledge and communicating with the world. And while this is going on, Eddie also perfects his financial arrangements.
End of Section. To continue next, click 16.(29-30) A Japan Expatriate's Tax Avoidance
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