Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
This polished stone baseball and Mizuno bat caught my eye as I passed a gravestone and statuary shop yesterday (That's a standard Japanese gravestone behind it). I thought the holes were for flowers and incense, but it seems the maker perhaps didn't have that in mind. Whimsical website for a gravestone maker. あぶらとり石？
is a vegetarian and vegan restaurant conveniently located at the corner of Imadegawa and Higashioji Streets, an area known as hyakumanben in the district of Kyoto University.
I had a delicious Thai style green curry there today with organic brown rice. Yoshiko had tofu chicken that I refused to believe was not real chicken. I made the waitress come over and swear that it wasn't real chicken kara-age, but I still can't believe it. They also have a big gaijin-sized soyburger, and that is my next target.
Tasty, but a bit funny because they are on the third floor above gyudon (1F) and yakiniku (2F) restaurants. Here is their website.
UPDATE: I emailed the restaurant, and it turns out the waitress I talked to was the owner, so I guess I'll concede that the chicken really was made of soybeans. Also, she replied that the location of Cafe Peace above the two beef restaurants was no ironic accident:
"When I opened Cafe Peace, I deliberately choose that location.The motive of starting this restaurant was to spread Veganism & Animal ethics. So my target was not only vegetarian but mainly meat eater."
Good place. I'll be back.
Joi Ito videotaped a maiko performance over the weekend, the ceremony of passing from maiko to geisha in Gion.
My neighbors pound rice into gooey mochi, which is rolled in cornstarch, filled with sweet red bean jam or eaten in various other ways. I did the next round.
Here's a short video of the pounding. Watch those fingers!
It seems I've been nominated twice (?) for some Japanese blog award I didn't know about, and even got a few votes. Thanks for that. The strange thing is, the leading blog as of Saturday night, something called "Kind of Crap", is not a blog at all, just a JET's personal website with journal-style entries. Oh, and he has underline tags on all kinds of things that are not links. Go ahead and look.
It would be embarrassing for me as one of the registered Japan Bloggers to have this award hijacked, even if I've never heard of it. Thus, I am asking you, if you haven't voted, to go over there and vote for Sushicam if you have just a minute to spare. Sushicam is only a few votes behind, and he posts some good pictures. If a dozen or so people vote from here, that might do it, as the voting ends tomorrow at noon.
Then come back here and report your good deed in the comments. I'll give you a pony.
Sleet is falling after overnight snow on Saturday, the first day of the new Year's holiday for many people.
This year for the Christmas feast I made egg nog for the first time ever, and it was quite good. I'd only had the strange-tasting kind from the carton before, and it was an annual ritual: "I'll have a few sips of the junk, this nutmeg-flavored liquid plastic, then I don't have to touch it for another year."
This time I made it fresh, it was really simple, and I went easy on the nutmeg. Very nice. This will definitely become a tradition.
EggNog Recipe
(Do this earlier in the day to let it cool)
ingredients:
3 cups whole milk
1 cup cream
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
whole nutmeg
fine grater
In saucepan, beat eggs and add 2 cups milk, then heat it over medium low flame while stirring continuously, add sugar and salt as it heats and keep stirring, but don't cook those eggs, now, are you listening to me?
When it's plenty warm but not hot (it will coat a metal spoon), take it off the stove and stir in the remaining milk and cream and vanilla, and add grated nutmeg slowly, checking the taste, till it meets your personal nutmeg point.
Let it cool to room temperature at least before serving, and put it in the fridge to chill further. This is made of eggs, it won't keep more than a couple days.
Drink it as is after stirring to smoothen it, or garnish with shaved chocolate for kiddies or rum, whiskey or liquer for grown-ups.
The Emperor's birthday (Dec. 23) is a national holiday in Japan, and close to
Christmas, so we cooked a traditional turkey (5kg, about 10 lbs.) dinner at my mother-in-law's house and invited the Shindomo family. This is Daiki Shindomo, an up-and-coming musical talent, posing with the victim. A traditional turkey dinner in my family consists of exactly roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and peas. This year, everything turned out perfect, the best we've done yet, which is a real confidence builder. Christmas/Thanksgiving dinner also normally includes my mom's unbeatable apple pie, which Yoshiko has mastered, but this year Michiyo Shindomo made strawberry shortcake, and it was excellent.
Daiki being the only kid there, he got a pirate's haul of presents, and entertained us with songs played on various instruments.
I just happened to hit these two sites in succession and notice that Wirefarm Jim and Hunkabutta Mike photographed what looks like the same sembei shop recently.
Programming note: A TV Tokyo crew recently filmed a wedding I did for a show called Joho Spirits that airs tonight at 7:53. I wasn't aware that it was going to be filmed, but these shabbily dressed TV people burst in and set up all around me. I have no idea what the topic is, and TV production being what it is, I don't know whether the wedding will be part of the show. We don't get Tokyo Terebi in Kyoto, but it is on in Osaka on Ch. 19 (I used to live there). If anyone sees it, lemme know what it was about. It certainly couldn't be as bad as my appearance on Yoshimoto TV.
Our neighborhood this morning. We've got a Christmas turkey that we'll be cooking for friends on Tuesday, a national holiday (Emperor's birthday).
The wacky Nankai train looks to me like a Batmobile.
Japanese Traffic Guide is very useful.
This is like JR's O-dekake.net in English; I'm using it right now to plan tomorrow's nutty schedule.
As seen on Wirefarm, Gen Kanai's weblog and MediaTinker .Thanks Jim, Gen and Kristen, and whoever I missed.
There is a fringe of snow sprinkled on everything in Kyoto this morning. Look at Kinkakuji in the link below. Good timing.
Be the first to compose a poem when the season's first snowfall occurs in Kyoto. I did see a light dusting on the northern mountains, but only briefly, on Tuesday morning.
Updated every five minutes.
In October, my original 300Mhz iBook running Jaguar suddenly died without warning after 3 years of faithful service. I had installed a 30GB HD (IBM Travelstar) to replace the original tiny 3 GB disk.
Unresolved kernel trap was what I got off the screen when it briefly rebooted a couple times. It went to the desktop and all my files were there, so at least the data is still on the disk. I tried Zapping PRAM, that old standby, but nothing. More obscure startup rituals like CMD-O-F and CMD-S also got me nowhere. Now it won't even start to boot up, so I am stuck. I can occasionally get the startup chord, but the screen doesn't even illuminate.
A local Mac shop wanted to 70,000-80,000 yen to fix it, not knowing what was wrong. Obviously, the whole computer is not worth that much anymore, but there are some files on there that aren't backed up, like pictures. Most of the mission-critical stuff I had backed up.
If I break it down and take out the HD, would someone be able to plug it in and copy the data (probably about 6GB, I don't need the apps) onto DVD? Or should I leave it inact and send the whole computer to someone?
A day to honor parents who send baby photos as 500k email attachments.
Actually the subway was coming to a stop. I got on it. This is a half-second exposure, I set the camera (Lumix FZ10) on my left hand, flat like a table, to keep it still in combination with the image stabilization.
Some final pictures. The one on the right is 1024 X 768 background size. I actually shot it from a distance at full zoom to blur the background rather than opening the aperture. Actually, it was far from the walking path through the garden, so I had no choice.
But I did it in about 30 minutes.
sanjomame.mov
Also, what to do when you have stones left over after building a wall. Pretty up a ditch! (at Nijojo)
Tonight's moon at full zoom (420mm equivalent) unreduced; ISO 50, tripod, f4, 1/200, light shapening. it's beautiful when it rises behind Mt. Hiei and silhouettes it before coming into view, as it did tonight.
There's also Duff Dry, Duff Light, Raspberry Duff, Lady Duff and Tartar Control Duff.
Kitsune no yomeiri (the fox's wedding) is rain that falls from sunny skies. We got it today, and it made a rainbow to the north (hard to capture with a camera) as we crossed the Sanjo bridge toward Starbucks and Funahashi-ya. This bridge is where the Shinsengumi used to hold their executions by hanging.
Yoshiko pointed out the hawks overhead, and I wheeled and caught a few jittery, off-balance shots with the FZ10 at full zoom. Also, more bloomin' cotton! Another cotton boll opened up, so Yoshiko harvested it this morning. She now has 3 bolls in an airtight jar, and two unopened bolls still on the plant. Enough to make a hanky? Who knows?
Flash animation by Kucinich campaign.
A classy restored ryokan (it was locked up and decaying, and seemed on the verge of demolition for years) by the Kamo River in Higashiyama ward. The river is wider than it looks here, that's just a side channel. My mother-in-law's house is just across the river in the Miyagawa-cho hanamachi.
Skulls unearthed in Osaka Castle moat, some with fatal katana (samurai sword) wounds, others with holes from arrows shot clean through. (Japanese only, sorry).
Ginkgo is ichou in Japanese. I live off Shirakawa street, whichis lined with ichou trees. This one was at Nijo-jo, though. Another shot with the new Panasonic Lumix FZ10.
This covered corridor at Chion-in stands in for the Meiji Emperor's palace in Tokyo. Yoshiko saw Ken Watanabe filming at Chion-in last year in November, with of course fake blossoming cherry trees brought in. The scenes in Katsumoto's temple were shot in a temple in Himeji, not Kyoto.
Photos taken with Sony P-71.
Still to come is the video of Yoshiko and Michiyo talking with Tom. I saw it only on the camcorder screen that night, but we'll soon see how my first attempt at video capture and editing goes. Here's a picture of a little statue with stones piled for good luck, by a small villa perched above Chion-in, and the not-so-pretty view of downtown from Chion-in.
ISO 50; saturation +1; handheld Leica lens with optical image stabilization versus 1 double espresso, Starbucks, French Roast; reduced to 1000 X 750px and light sharpening in computer; moat by Shogun tokugawa Ieyasu (ca. 1603)
Couple of big 1280 X 960 size background pics. The Lumix FZ10 shots look excellent at full size WHEN THERE IS ENOUGH LIGHT FOR ISO 50. Otherwise they are only great. I'm shooting with high saturation and only resizing and lightly sharpening the output. Low maintenance. Note the slight barrel distortion in the gate. Nobody's perfect. The tree really is wide and low like that.
We were over at Mama's house this evening, so I grabbed the new camera and stepped outside to see who would stroll by.
Lumix FZ10 with built-in flash. grain in poorly-lit background is acceptable to me.
Most of the "maiko" you see (not these) in Kyoto are tourists dressing up to play maiko for a day while walking around. It's rather clear from the humorous way they totter on the sandals, especially the tall gaijin, but in case it isn't, some of the costume shops have an attendant that walks around with them, carrying a sign that says "These are not real maiko." Two weeks ago Yoshiko and I had a funny experience where a older lady in the neighborhood passing the costumed tourists in the street was muttering disdainfully, as loudly as she could, that they were "nise-maiko," in case we didn't know it.
When the maiko are afoot, of course, Peter MacIntosh is probably nearby.
The chochin (paper lamp) photo was without the strobe, as you can see.
Even though "Buu" means "ugly". Also, ryokan on Kiyamachi.
More Lumix FZ10 pictures
