Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
U.S. adopts aggressive tactics - Wash. Post
These jackboots were made for kickin'
Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info."
We ate dinner on the ground floor of this skinny building on Sunday.
I would love to have one of these. This would be great in Kyoto, or Kurashiki, I suppose.
Folks fooling around by the Kamo river. I fool around with time exposure on digicam. As a kid, I was burned on my eyelid by sparks when my neighbor tossed a little "spinning flower" firework. Thus, I prefer to keep my distance. I don't even like to hold these little sparkler things.
Hint: Look for the state-of-the-art facilities. (Actually, Kyoto University Hospital is one of Japan's finest. This is not it.)
Every year, a boy is chosen to ride in the front of the lead hoko, (the boy on the left), and he is in charge of asking for good fortune from the gods as they parade around the city.
This shop is next to Funahashiya rice crackers and Starbucks at the northwest corner of the Sanjo St. bridge over the Kamo River (Sanjo ohashi). It's hard to understand how a shop selling only brushes can survive at this prime location in the enterntainment district, but these are indeed the finest brooms and brushes made, each for a specific purpose (ask to the proprietress to recommend the right one for your job). According to Diane Durston's must-have Kyoto rambler's book, Old Kyoto, the owner/master craftsman died some years ago, but his widow keeps Naitoh Brooms going with a supply made by her late husband's apprentices.
The Gion Festival (matsuri=festival) is the biggest event of the year in Kyoto, and one of the biggest in Japan. It started in 869 as an appeal to the gods after a plague, according to the official story.
The huge pikes that spear the sky are meant to appease the gods, which doesn't sound logical, but the similar pike poles are part of other Kyoto festivals. On the night of July 16th, the pre-parade festivities reach a peak with the Yoi-yama viewing of the "floats" and street revelry on Shijo (Fourth) Street. Many people dress in light and colorful summer kimono called "yukata."
Citizens and visitors to Kyoto partake of eating, drinking, carnival games, buying lucky charms, viewing, photographing and climbing into the floats to have a look. The floats are large wagons, specifically the 23 big "Yama" (6 meters tall, 1.5 tons) and the 8 mega-huge "Hoko" (25 meters tall, 12 tons). Teams pull them with huge ropes in a big circuit around downtown on the morning of July 17th. The "Yamaboko" can not be steered as such, the wheel positions are fixed on the axles. Slung under the carraige, each wagon carries a supply of (bamboo?) sticks, and these are laid crosswise in front of the wheels when the wagon reaches one of the intersections. They haul it up onto the sticks, and with some water lubrication, pull sideways to "spin" the giant carts 90 degrees. Impressive teamwork it is, and this is the essence of many Japanese festivals, which more often than not celebrate the communal spirit that used to be required in a communal society to grow and harvest rice.
I heard the semi just now, 0940 on July 16, 2003, for the first time this year. Never marked it down before. Viva la Blogging!
I'll try to get some pictures tonight and tomorrow morning. You can see lots of people in yukata (colorful summer kimono) at this webcam this afternoon and evening.
Sorry for lack of posting. I got Deadlines.
Finished editing second half of 200-page genomics manuscript, finishing update of int'l atherosclerosis conference website tonight, must finish artist full website project I'm so behind on. When I can do that, I'll be caught up, in theory.
Here's a link in the meantime: Worst Case Scenarios - Learn how to jump from a building into a dumpster, fend off a shark, escape from a sinking car, land a plane when the pilot is dead, all skills that will come in handy in 's merciless New World Order.
Haven't we read this before?
...For example, last December I was on my way to Tokyo through Hokkaido's largest airport, Chitose. Far afield from any security zone, up came a cop.
"Hey you. Show me your passport."
Why doesn't every cop have a picture of this guy inside his hat? Why isn't debito suru a Japanese verb for holding cops feet to the fire?
J-: weasels or not weasels?
I am in a dispute with J- because the USB for the new 2003 super advanced model they sold me is not compatible with Macs (I own 2 Macs, no Windows), but this is stated nowhere in the advertising or even in the manual. I say they deceived me and should replace it with one that is, or one with Flash card, they say that because they didn't make the handset they sold me, it's not their problem.
_______________
"Do you want the scratch-proof lenses?"
This sentence makes me want to cram the "complimentary glasses case" down the saleswoman's throat.
*gurgling sound* "How about the ¥60,000 upgrade to Carl Zeiss lenses?"
I wonder if the scratch-proofing is free on those? Do they really do anything to make the glasses scratch-proof, or scratch-resistant?
Adjacent to the famous zen garden at Ryoanji.
via Geisha Asobi
As everyone knows, Mt. Fuji is 3,776 meters tall, the tallest mountain in Japan. The climbing season started at the beginning of this month, coinciding with the end of the lowball campaign ¥59 MacDonald's hamburger, which became an ¥80 hamburger. If you took advantage of the low price and bought 59 of the ¥59 hamburgers, some guys mused on IM, then somehow carried them to the top of Mt. Fuji and placed them exactly on the summit, You would make it one meter taller.
So they did. (bad Excite english translation, but you can look at pictures.)
This is the kind of thing that would make sense to college students.
Interesting point in here that DoCoMo and J- both get adequate signal strength at the summit. Has anyone moblogged the summit of Fujisan yet?
I just happened to go by this wall in Takatsuki the other day, and it was still there, but slightly covered with more up-to-date urban tagger graffiti. You'd think the neighbors would have done something about it in the interim.
Issue #52 of Kyoto Journal (links at right) had an excerpt from Marc Keane's latest book, The Art of Setting Stones, which really made a strong impression on me. Marc and his son came across a large boulder on a hike with obvious sacred significance, and intertwines this narrative with a story about the life cycles of another stone, reused in different gardens over the centuries, to show the community-building function of stones throughout Japanese history, and then right in front of him.
I never signed up or even visited the site, but I just discovered through my logs that somehow I ended up as a publicly traded entity on Blogshares, and Esthet Lil seems to be controlling my share price on
her way to mega-millionaire status. I think she has figured out their system.
There! She just bought 10 more shares while I was typing! You're a shrewd one, Lil.
Is this something I need to pay attention to? Can anime dorks wrest control of my site and force me to publish DragonballZ wallpaper?
And perhaps someone was photographing me as well.
The Kyoto International Community House near Heian Shrine, at Keage Station on the new To-zai subway. Bulletin board with stuff for sale/housing/private teacher listings, craft classes, free nihongo lessons if you don't mind being in a class with students from China who know the kanji but not the structure of the language.
Struttin'. The view from the other side. Click for 1024 X 768 Desktop background.
I recommend this map book if you are traveling to Kyoto and Osaka. I bought one in California, and it has been the best of all my kyoto maps.
Kyoto-Osaka: A Bilingual Atlas. Published by Kodansha, ISBN 4-7700-1610-7 . Of course, you can get it at any of the big bookstores after you get here, mine says ¥2,100.
I noticed that Buddy Hackett didn't get the classy CNN obit photo with the black background, the deep shadows, the white glow and the cursive script. I guess because he was a funny little Jew who worked blue material. Well, one time my parents rushed me to the hospital with a fever, and I had to spend the night with an I.V. in my arm, and I couldn't sleep with that, and I was up all night. So, I illegally turned the TV back on after lights out, and was inaugurated into the world of Johnny Carson. Buddy entertained me that night, so I rigged up a classy obit photo for him in return. RIP, Buddy.
