Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
The view from the back of priests playing drum, flute and cymbal as dancers in red headdress perform Ayako-mai, a precursor to kabuki.
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Attention, large-footed gentlemen: I have just received shipment of a pair of these cushy, hand-made Brazilian loafers in black, size 13 American, but really they are size 12 (that's 11 UK, 45? in Europe) and just a bit too small for me. Not even a scuff on the bottom, I didn't even step outside in them, just tried them on in the genkan with socks. I can send them back to Land's End no problem, but I figured some other big guy in japan might want some. ¥5,000 and I'll send them COD.
at Funahashiya at the Sanjo Street bridge. I just like this old arare (sembei, rice cracker) shop, and keep photographing it from different angles. If Kevin is reading this, the shop has a mascot (perhaps Mynah) bird named Mame-chan who sits out front in good weather. The weather was, in fact, good today, so Mame-chan was singing and speaking for the customers.
Sagimori Jinja is our neighborhood shrine, which means it is where our twice-yearly "shrine fee" goes. One of the responsibilities of living in a house rather than apartment is that you have to support the nearest shrine. Not by government decree, obviously, because Japan has the same separation of church and state, but by overwhelming social pressure, a Japanese forte. Sagimori is nice, but it's not on any tourist must-see lists. It does, however, commemorate a duel of one of the baddest of bad-asses, Miyamoto Musashi. He reputedly won 60 duels before retiring to become an artist. He also apparently ended up with a restaurant in Detroit (scroll down for bio). His portrait here is less flattering than the dashing hero portrayed in the current NHK-TV series.
If you were wondering why God couldn't spare you any good luck recently, she was taking care of all these people.
and she is "in a family way" once again. Our window is getting crowded with generations of her offspring, they have to hunt in shifts. If you pull back your head from the screen a little, perhaps you can make out the two pink eggs showing through her skin and the frosted glass, perhaps you can't. They are easy to see directly with the eye, anyway. I'm guessing the mysterious Mr. X is the culprit here.
On her birthday (June 23rd), I present a little placard made by Mom with some aphorisms. Are these from Dale Carnegie or Norman Vincent Peale? I don't know, but this was hanging in our house for as long as I can remember. it must be at least 30 years old, I think it was a flower in the middle. Some things here that I should remember more often. Instead of burning incense in front of her altar, I put regular dry (sencha) tea in an aromatherapy burner, and lit a candle as usual under it. Great way to give your home a nice tea smell.
The person who invented Sobe Green Tea should be dragged out into the street and beaten. Not to within an inch of his life, but enough so that he remembers to never ever do such a thing again. Bad! Bad inventor man!
The same goes for
It was a hot day in sunny California, and I wanted a nice refreshing and cool beverage. I walked into a little grocery, and in the cooler case was an enormous bottle of very refreshing-looking GREEN TEA! Imagine that, here I was, so far from Japan, but with the ultimate refreshment right there. I bought a bottle and walked outside, waiting hardly a second to twist off the cap and tilt my head back. Quenchment, ahoy! Gulp-huh-sugar!!?? There's sugar in green tea??!!! Check again, yes, it's sugar.
I threw the rest into the garbage can that was thoughtfully placed outside for this purpose, and went back into the store. I can't remember my thinking at the time, but when I saw the bottle of Sobe Oolong Tea, I must have been so overcome with the anticipation of drinking oolong tea and clearing out the previous beverage's taste that I didn't stop to consider the possibility that it too was packed with sugar. It was.
I abhor Sobe Green Tea, I loathe Sobe Oolong Tea, and I detest the thinking behind the marketing of these unredeemable beverages.
I stitched together 5 pictures to make this, which shows the burial mound of Emperor Suinin in Nara. He was the the 11th emperor of Japan, according to the Nihon Shoki, and likely reigned at the end of the 4th century. The tomb is about 200m long, keyhole shaped (this is the round end), surrounded by a moat, and off limits. The other picture is a marker outside the moat, with Suinin's name at the lower left, the rest I don't know.
1. What would happen to me if I got caught trespassing? (I'm not gonna, this is hypothetical.) Would the cops hand me over to Kunaicho? (shudder)
2. Why don't teenage Japanese boys sneak onto these tumuli? That's where American boys would go to drink beer and fight.
Here is a digicam view of that archaelogical site I snapped with my cell yesterday. Today I was in the same area and took this picture. That's a rice field in the background. Unfortunately, I know nothing about this site. Nara was the first capital of Japan, called Yamato, before Kyoto, so there is A LOT of archaeology in Nara, and every time someone breaks ground, it is subject to scrutiny.
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A webcam facing an active volcano in Southern Japan (Kyushu), where you need to sometimes need to carry an umbrella for the ash. Updates once a minute (hit refresh, the colored buttons are not buttons). There are some archived shots at the bottom, and just above those are text links for some of their best shots. The name "373.com" can be read as "mi-na-mi", "3-7-3", which means south, generally referring to islands from Southern Kyushu to Okinawa. My undersea photographer brother-in-law was in the news there yesterday. His pics are being used in an environmental campaign. His website is linked in the right column of this site, at the bottom.
A Canadian reader has forwarded the email below from a hotel in Kyoto which refused his reservation inquiry. I'm going to investigate this weekend to find out how widespread this phenomenon is. More to come...
------begin email----------
From: Hotel •••• Kyoto
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003
To: ••••
Subject: from Hotel •••• Kyoto
Dear ••••,
Thank you for sending E-mail to us. We're so glad to recieve it. However, we apologize to you, because we have to refuse your reservation.
To be honest with you, we are so worried about SARS.
Many hotels in Japan including our hotel are so worried about it. After disappearing the fear of SARS, we're looking forward to recieve your good reservation and staying with you.
A heartwarming tale of a man overcoming his fear of the double espresso.
Goodd pictures
I recommend you open this link in a new window or a tab
Satellite image of north central Kyoto, showing the pine trees covering the large Imperial Palace grounds (most of which is open to the public year round) and the confluence of the Kamo (upper) and Takano (lower) Rivers (Shimogamo Shrine is on the spit of land between them). Doshisha University is to the north of the palace (the right in this picture), and Kyoto University is mostly off screen to the east (bottom). I can see my office, the bench where I first kissed my wife, and lots of tennis courts, where Japanese college students play a an annoying game that resembles tennis but is more focused on shouting encouragement to others in your tennis club. The sempai-kohai death struggle. This is just amazing to me, this cultural difference, that college students would WILLINGLY carry out this stilted relationship for hours on end without anyone forcing it upon them.
With the straight lines of the subject, you can easily see the weakness of the little digicam lens at the edges, even though I cropped all the sides to minimize it. I have this great old Nikon SLR, I used to shoot for the newspaper back home. Its case is gathering dust now. I should get it out, screw on that 135mm portrait lens...
The rainy season has officially started in Kansai, according to the news. It was drizzling all day in Kyoto. With all the rain we had this spring, it's amusing that Mother Nature has more left to give. I wonder where we stand on the drought. I haven't seen any stories about the water level in Lake Biwa recently.
Between Yasaka-no-to (pagoda) and Kiyomizu Temple
An Art of Star Wars exhibit is coming to the Kyoto National MuseumJune 24-August 31.
OK, that's misleading, but what we have here are case studies illustrated with imaging and perioperative photographs. As one who spent a good deal of his childhood under the knife, the nuts and bolts of surgery have always been fascinating to me.
Warning: real pictures of surgery
main menu of cases
Removal of cranial tumor
I have no memory of buying this handmade postcard showing the 1920's-era Ole Hansen Beach Club in San Clemente, California, where we were married on a day in 1999 much like the one pictured here. The ceremony was on the veranda at far left (a guy in the photo is standing where we did) with the Pacific as our backdrop. During the ceremony an Amtrak train came through with two loud horn blows, which the Reverend referred to as a "salute". The party was in the adjacent second floor banquet room obscured by palm trees, between the turret (decorative only, as far as I know) and the veranda. The photo was taken from the houses atop the cliffs, where I used to live (93-4) before coming to Japan.
畳の上で死にたいんですか?
Woody Allen said, "I don't want to acheive immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." Love and death was for me one of his funnier movies. And that's a picture of me among Nobunaga's dead samurai, on the other side of Hiei-zan in Takashima. Incoherent lead-in, but...
Death can be fun in Japan, too! Check out the amusement park-themed nav at the O-Soushiki Plaza website. Sorry, it's all Japanese, except for this helpful guide for dying Japanese style.
Articles on contemporary legal and social issues
Women's Online Media
Click for 1280 X 960 desktop background image (340kb) of a purification basin at Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto.
OSAKA (Kyodo News) Major travel agency JTB Corp. said Tuesday it will launch a discount bus service to help three tourist resorts in western Japan overcome the effects of a visit by a doctor from Taiwan infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
JTB will offer round-trip bus services between Shin-Osaka and the three spots to tourists who add 100 yen each to their hotel expenses.
The three resorts are Amanohashidate in Kyoto, Awajishima Island in Hyogo Prefecture, and Shodoshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture.
Some Dutch profiteer named J. Flikweert (according to the WHOIS lookup) in Gravenpolder, The Netherlands, is selling an instant SARS cure (and preventative) on his new website, SARSdisease.info
Don't let the .info extension fool you, there isn't any. This person is also selling magic pills for smallpox and antrax (sic, very sic).
Somewhere back there is a restroom, but I was afraid of breaking a window or something. I was raised by wolves.
I have 2 questions:
1. What is this thing called in Japanese?
2. What is written on it?
Michael Kinsley explains the tax cuts in plain English. The bottom line: "For a few hundred dollars, the government buys your support for a plan worth millions to those who already have millions."
In our neighborhood is a big park called Takaragaike, and the Kyoto International Conference Hall is by the lake there. This is where the COP3 Kyoto environmental accord was produced, and the World Water Forum this year.
It's so hard to choose your caffeine format. Well, now you don't have to. Through amazing beverage technology, coffee has been "cola-fied" to produce this rocket juice, "Coffee Cola". Yes, it is exactly as bad as you imagine. I wonder how long this bright idea lasted before I got this one at a 100 yen store?
