Jesus, I thought I'd seen depressing subways: Photos made in Moscow subway

Riding next to an armed soldier is probably a hell of a lot more effective than women-only subway cars, though.

T has a one of those triangle guitar-thingies balalaika at his house. It's not that huge, though.

That I would post about such a common topic is itself ironic, but great displeasure forces my hand. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have come to the stunning conclusion that the word blog is stupid and needs to be replaced. My reasons for saying such?

• Mainly, it just sounds ugly. "I'm gonna start me a blaaaaaaaawg."
• And it's mama's ugly, too: As we all know, blog itself stems from the word weblog, which isn't really much to look at, is it?
• Pretty much any word stemming from the word blog is also horrible: Blogger, blogging, audioblog, blog client, blogging software, blogging platform, blog feed, BlogDay, blogroll, moblog, multi-blog, re-blog, vlogging, video blog, splog, blogspouse, blogfather, blogmeet, and last but not least, blogosphere - a wonderfully descriptive word that sounds absolutely ridiculous.
• Before becoming an abbreviated form of the word weblog, the word blog actually had another meaning (since 1959!)
• Is it any coincidence that blog is a four letter word? Think about it: "I'm gonna undress you, then I'm gonna blog your brains out ALL NIGHT LONG"
• When CNN starts using a trendy term every ten minutes, you know it's time for a change (heard just this morning on CNN-I: "We will now hear what THE BLOGS have to say about it." Give me a break, fucking.)

Unfortunately, alternatives such as "online journal" and "net diary" are also wretchingly gay. Therefore, I propose we, (the temporarily) blogging collective, use a new term to describe this pursuit.

Any suggestions?

It's comforting to know there are some familiar points in the society into which I shall plunge: Slapstick, vampires, hot chicks on TV.

On the other hand, sometimes it is disturbing to see the whitening effect of various cosmetics pursued by so many in Thailand. You know what, though? I attribute this less to the perceived beauty of pale skin than to the fickle nature of the female species - you know, wanting straight hair when they have perms and vice versa. It's a vicious cycle, but it's also only natural, I guess.

(via Magnoy)

Excerpts from another great memoir over on the JPRI site:

"The radio went dead. All the servants had long disappeared—stealing everything they could carry.
I locked all the doors and shutters and stayed in the dark. The planes were flying very low now, using the tramcar lines along the boulevard as a guide. When they opened up with their machine-guns, I guessed that the troops were near.
It was a long, long night. When dawn arrived, I couldn’t understand the sudden quiet, and ventured to the gate to look up to the main street. Imagine my astonishment when I saw thousands of troops marching softly past, carrying or riding bicycles! I learned later that 75,000 men entered Soerabaya that day.
I stayed locked in the house waiting for them to come for me, as I knew they would. It was dark before the hammering started on the door. I was terrified, but knew I had to hide it. So, carrying Jackie in my arms I opened the door. There were six storm troopers with fixed bayonets at the entrance. They pushed past me yelling for everybody to come out. They looked very tired, unshaven, hot and dirty and very violent."

.............

"On a diet of rice and vegetable soup (a cup of each) three times a day, the casualties soon started to appear. The fat women seemed to show it first as they lost weight so quickly. The thin ones like myself lost weight, but it didn’t show so badly. Luckily I liked rice so had no trouble swallowing it. There were no eggs, meat, fruit or milk. We were allowed a spoon of sugar each per day. The Japanese insisted that everything delivered as food went into the pot. There were no peelings, and even the greens of carrots were thrown in—but still there was not enough to go around. Many of the growing children were very hungry. If it had not been so frightening it would have been interesting to see how quickly signs of malnutrition started to show—stomachs and ankles started to swell. Another inexplicable thing to me was that from the moment I was interned, until I was released I never menstruated once. Also although I ate exactly the same food, my ankles never swelled. Soon dysentery swept through the camp and in the heat the smell was terrible, and of course people began to die. I was so grateful I had brought along Jackie’s pot, for we both used it throughout internment and didn’t catch dysentery. I know how badly the men were treated in their camps, but I think the plight of the women has perhaps not been truly understood. They had their children to care for, and had to watch them go hungry. They were suddenly deprived of their wealth and position in society—and the aggravation amongst themselves was tragic to watch. Of course all classes were thrown together—we were only numbers now."

.............

"Kimura ordered her out of the office and walked her to the middle of the compound, where everybody could see. It was dark, and I could only see shadows in the background. My legs felt weak and my stomach sick. He started to beat her up, and when I say “beat,” I really mean it. He slapped her about the face with his open hand until it started to look like raw beefsteak. All the time he was giving me a running commentary of what he was doing. Although swollen and raw no blood flowed from her face. He then hit her ears, carefully demonstrating to me how he cupped his hands to avoid breaking her eardrum. She was reeling from side to side until she fell unconscious to the ground. He turned away as a cat from a dead mouse. She didn’t amuse him any more. I called out for help after he had gone and a few women came out and helped me get her to the hospital. We were in luck for once. Earlier in the day I had interpreted for the doctor, who thought she had a diphtheria victim and needed ice. Surprisingly, we got some brought in and we now packed this over the woman’s swollen face. Just as Kimura had said, you couldn’t see a mark on her next day!"

.............

What an amazing story. This woman went through some crazy hardships and survived; go read the whole paper.

I just scared myself real good.

I thought I'd lost my wallet.

The thing is, I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen it, and I hadn't used it for a couple of days. My heart sunk further and further as each place I searched turned up empty... I was really fucked becuase my wallet contains really everything I need to survive in modern society. Driver's license, gaijin card, bank card, postal savings card, credit card, health insurance card, hospital card, dental clinic card, latest bank statement, a million membership cards, business cards, a few vital phone numbers jotted down on a waxy napkin, pictures of my wife and family, spare key for my car, a ball of pocket lint, my company's pocket calendar, and a partridge in a 20th century pear tree.

To apply for replacements of all that shit would have taken longer than I have in Japan, starting with the driver's license and gaijin card in order to be able to prove my identity at the bank, since all the cash I have on hand is the kind that jingles, in my piggy bank (actually the cardboard tube my primo bottle of Cazadores came in). I was in a sweat looking for that goddamn thing, believe me. And then I called Nam, because that's who I always depend on when I lose shit - wallet, keys, keitai, my glasses (that's the funniest one cuz I cant see SHIT w/o my specs). Of course, she wasn't answering her cell in Thailand, which made me despair even more.

Anyway, after a whole hour of searching, I finally was about to give up and go file a report at the police station, and then I spotted a familiar shape underneath a car rag that I had moved today when sorting out shit in preparation for my big move to Thailand. At once, my heart jumped and I threw the evil rag aside to reveal my dear, dear wallet. Oh how I love you. I am so happy now.

Funny how things can turn in an instant. Sometimes life is sweet:

Is this the new Macarena?

I can't claim to watch Pythagoras Switch (ピタゴラ・スイッチ) on a regular basis or anything, but this is some damn fine educational television programming for 6- to 8-year olds.

They are known as lawsuit guitars because they are of such good quality (often matching or even surpassing the original Fenders and Gibsons they replicate), that:

Around 1981, though, Fender, Gibson, Rickenbacker and a few other US guitar manufacturers got their hands on some "lawsuit" guitars made in Japan and quickly threatened to sue when they saw how exact the Japanese replicas really were. The Japanese replica-making guitar manufacturers were forced to stop making these "copy" guitars around 1983.

There are still tons of these guitars around if you search the used guitar shops and pawn shops, although some of the more famous models outprice the American equivalents they were originally based on!

Read more about the lawsuit guitars on this site.

Oh, my shaka.

"PuppyPurse makes it easier to take your dog with you, whether you're shopping, fly fishing or just taking a walk and nothing gets in the way of snuggling and kissing your baby whenever you want to"

According to the official website, this product seems to appeal mostly to snobby rich blondes.

And how do the dogs feel about it?

Just shoot me, already.

This is one of the most amazing videos I've ever seen. Those of you with babies (hint, hint, hint, and lord forgive me if I forgot anyone else's child) might want to take note.

I apologize that the video is entirely in Japanese, with no subtitles.

Basically, this is a television show called Tantei Knight Scoop that documents strange and interesting people/places/things that their viewers often send in. In this episode, a mother of a child who fusses a lot writes in to say that a popular television commercial by Takemoto Piano has a strangely and instantaneously soothing effect on her son and his friends (this effect is in fact documented on the company's website, and during the clip the man in the commercials says that people call in all the time asking when it will be on the air!). I think you can basically understand it from there. At the end of the show, the host concludes that the tonal range of the commercial is probably soothing to babies, at around 440 Hz.

..........

Here are both commercials that reportedly make babies stop crying, rolled into a single clip:

Let me know if they really work or not!

/////////////////

UPDATE 2007/03/21: Once again, Takemoto's tranquility effect transcends borders!

Here's a cool piece of Flash to make you feel better after a long day in cubicle hell: http://www.trevorvanmeter.com/flyguy/flyGuy.swf

(belly-dancing monkey alert!)

Don't you want to hear the full story behind the use of my name and the word "hymen" in the same sentence?

Sorry, Kevin made me swear not to tell anyone...

Whether she'll be given the "F", indeed.

Okay, since this would ostensibly allow me to carry bottles of (gasp!) drinking water onto planes again, can I get a fucking "amen" for the following course of action?

1. Poison Bobby Brown's stash of happy dust
2. Send Whitney Houston to patrol the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on a donkey

Click for enlightenment.

Did someone forgot to take their meds?

In the essay titled "Killing Kittens" in the newspaper's Aug. 18 evening edition, Bando, 48, wrote that she owns three pet cats and throws their kittens off the cliff near her house on the South Pacific island of Tahiti whenever they give birth to any.

"I am fully aware what severe criticism I may face if I write this," she says at the outset of the essay. "I will probably be condemned as a savage by animal lovers around the world, and people may say I am violating the animal protection law. Knowing this, I confess I am killing kittens."

Bando writes that although she had considered having her cats sterilized she has not done so, because she thinks that having sex when they are on heat and giving birth to offspring is what "life" is all about for a female cat.

"I have doubts about simply depriving them of their essential life for simply for the convenience of humans," she says.

She has doubts about depriving her cats of "life" for her own convenience, but has no qualms about doing the same to kittens? It takes a special kind of crazy to see the logic here, I'm guessing.

So the real question is: Is this just a stunt to revitalize book sales, or is this banzai cliff bitch really that crazy? I vote for the former, because the statement "knowing this, I confess I am killing kittens" is just too perfect - it's designed to provoke a response. Like a book burning.

I came across this fascinating article over at the website of the Japan Policy Research Institute: A Wild Start: Okinawa in the 1970s

Excerpts:

"Gate Two Street and BC Street in Koza City was where the best wide-open bar district action was, except for the majority of Afro-American servicemen. Some of those guys did party with us Euro-American and Latino-American servicemen and go bar hopping with us, but most GI Soul Brothers stuck to "The Bush."

The Bush was an all black environment. The Soul Brothers had nearly completely segregated themselves out of all the other bar districts on The Rock a long time before I got there.

Oh, that probably isn't correct. I bet that they had been segregated out of the light-skinned GI's bar districts way back in the beginning of American troop occupation of the island. Then the black guys had liked what they were left with, because they had made themselves a place of their own that fit their lifestyles and cultural tastes, so they kept it."

and:

"Only Okinawans worked in the civilian bars on The Rock. In a Gate Two/BC Street type of A-Sign bar, there were bartenders, bar bouncers and doormen who were all good at fighting Karate style. When a fight started in an A-Sign bar, between a GI, or GIs, and one of the Okinawans working there, if the GI, or GIs, didn't give up, back off and get the hell out of there real quick, or get knocked unconscious right away, the unfortunate GIs got the crap Karate kicked out of them by some, or all, of the Okinawan men working in that bar. If any of the fighting occurred outside a bar, then the bouncers and doormen from the other bars in the immediate area came over and jumped into the action and backed up their brethren Okinawans; that way any other GIs in the immediate area would be discouraged from jumping in on the side of the unfortunate GIs. If any GI got knocked on the ground by the bouncers, then the Okinawans all took turns kicking the poor guy."

and:

"When the bar, brothel, massage parlor girls were eighteen years old, after studying hard during twelve years of going to school, six days a week, for eleven months a year, life as they had known it was over. If any girl ran away from the mamasan/papasan, who held her in bonded servitude, the Okinawan cops went and fetched her back. It's a small island, after all: where was she going to hide for long?"

..................

Actually the thing that drew me into the article to begin with was the mention of the Asapen Spotmatic camera. I borrowed one off of Nam's dad for a while (he left it at her place when he came to visit her at Tenri U) when I first started working in Osaka and wasted many rolls of film with it, but I still love that camera. Old guys would stop me on the street all the time with comments like, natsukashi, na! ("that sure brings back memories!") And when I took it to a camera shop for repair, the guy did it for free and complimented me for being so old school! I kinda felt like shit because I barely knew how to use it at the time, but his praise sure sure put a smile on my face...

Who has less of a clue, the author, or the subject of this article: Sony buys video-sharing site by Gary Gentile

"Media companies, including Sony, have begun to offer content side by side with videos shot by amateurs on sites such as MySpace, Guba and BitTorrent."

"...allows people to place those videos on social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster using its peer-to-peer network."

This is my favorite bit, though:

"Sony could also discover new talent on the site, Lynton said."

..

UPDATE: Robert Cringely thinks this is a good market research opportunity for Sony

My tooth is dead.

The dentist was very nice and kept trying out his rusty English skillz on me during the entire procedure...

"Infected with bacteria..."

"Very very difficult...sorry! It hurt?"

"Your tooth... dead"

So RIP, tooth. My ode to you:

(ultracool mp3 player via)

If you haven't seen Damn Interesting blog yet, you should go check it out - it's one of my favorite reads at the moment. Recent updating has been slow, but there are a few real gems in the archives.

Today's post on Operation Acoustic Kitty was sad, and awesome, and hilarious:

“They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up. The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that. Finally, they’re ready. They took it out to a park bench and said, “Listen to those two guys. Don’t listen to anything else – not the birds, no cat or dog – just those two guys!”

That's not just a cat - that's Doraemon!

Go read the entire post: Operation Acoustic Kitty

Only 26 days of work left for me now; 8 optional days off remain.

I've been in Japan so long, I actually started feeling guilty even just thinking about using them. So I asked the top office lady, the one who really makes things happen around here (you know the type, every Japanese office has one), whether I should use them or not.

She said, straight up, "I can't say - that's totally up to you."

Magic words, music to my ears.

.............

Actually, as I watched her lips move, all I could hear was, "you never have to work another Monday in Japan, ever again, if you so desire."

Fucking A.

Get in on the steaming hot Dianoga action already!

I'm testing the Performancing blog editor for Firefox. Looks pretty cool so far.

Image settings test:

Driveby shot of an average Awaji resident.

This is interesting:

The top camera makes and models used to take photos uploaded to Flickr

"The lists are generated automatically by periodically sampling the EXIF data from the stream of recent uploads."

I had no idea my camera, the D50, was so popular. Of course, I feel it's still the best DSLR for the money (I bought mine over a year ago), so it's unsurprising other people feel the same. Shit, if I wasn't completely happy with it, I'd switch to a different model just to not have the most popular one...

Now that I've invested in Nikon glass, if I were ever to lose or break my current camera body, I wouldn't hesitate in buying another D50 - it's currently listed for around 54,000 yen on kakaku (link to current price). That's cheap, and it will probably get cheaper, especially after the new D80 comes out.

Also found over on reddit: The World According to Ronald Reagan (map)

Even in California, our whole class cried the day he got shot. I remember the principal's voice over the PA system.

"Ecotopia" sure has grown over the years...

Over at McSweeney's:

On the Implausibilty of the Death Star's Trash Compactor

(via reddit)

This is perhaps the most interesting Wikipedia entry I have ever seen: List of Unusual Deaths

Most Notable:

• 892: Sigurd I of Orkney. Sigurd the Mighty conquered much of northern Scotland, which brought him into conflict with Maelbrigte of Moray. Sigurd defeated Maelbrigte in 892, killed him, cut off his head and strapped it to his saddle as a sign of triumph. As he rode, however, Maelbrigte's tooth rubbed against Sigurd's leg causing a wound which turned septic and Sigurd died of the poison.


• 1063: King Béla I of Hungary died when his tall wooden throne collapsed due to sabotage.


• 1327: King Edward II of England (to be later reincarnated as the Big Hominid), after being deposed and imprisoned by his Queen consort Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, was rumored to have been murdered by having a red-hot iron inserted into his anus.


• 1514: György Dózsa, leader of a peasants' revolt in the Kingdom of Hungary, was roasted alive on a white hot iron chair. His captured companions were forced to eat his flesh.


• 1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, who fell in a pit trap, was crushed by a bull that fell in the same pit.


• 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under duress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.


• 1940: Leon Trotsky, the Soviet revolutionary leader in exile, was assassinated with an ice axe in his Mexico home. His killer, spanish born soviet agent Ramon Mercader, acquired the ice axe in Trotsky's own office after being invited in. After receiving a brutal blow to the head, Trotsky fought and literally took a bite out of his murderer.

There seems to be a disproportionately large number of unusual deaths in ancient Hungary - sounds like it sucked to be a prominent figure then & there.

"The engine is a General Electric Model T58-8F. This is a helicopter turboshaft engine that was converted to a jet engine by some internal modifications and a custom tailpipe. The engine spins up to 26,000 RPM (idle is 13,000 RPM), draws air at 11,000 CFM, and is rated at 1350 hp. It weighs only 300 lbm. It grows as it warms up so the engine mounts have to account for this. The mounts in the front are rubber and the back are sliding mounts on rubber. The structure holding the engine was designed using finite element analysis and is redundant. Strong, damage tolerant, and light. Second battery and fuse/relay panel on the right, halon fire system and 5 gallon dry sump tank on left. 24V starter motor is in the nose of the engine. 700 A of current goes into that motor for 20 seconds during start-up. Due to heat, must limit starts to three in one hour. Big screen is to avoid FOD (foreign object damage). Jet keeps sucking the rose out of the bud vase on the dash!"

LINK

Reminiscent of Michael Hedges.

Behold two separate gifts from two different people, one from a person who doesn't smoke, and another from a person who... doesn't brush?

At first I thought it genius that a tobacco company would sell a toothbrush specifically to remove tar, but the logos aren"t exactly alike.

This product (the toothbrush) is just so... Japanese, somehow, although I can't explain it. It has something to so with the free packs of Larks they used to hand out at ski lifts, and Mickey Rourke doing commercials for them as a matador ("Speak Lark."), but I can't pin it down any better than that.

I totally slept through my appointment at the dentist today. Didn't even hear my alarm.

Animal is always hungry but Buddy is just hungrier here...

An interesting article on the current state of affairs: The trafficking scourge

"Yet to paint a picture of the victims of trafficking as poor, uneducated women duped into prostitution and kept under close guard would not be completely accurate. “Most cases are not that simple,” says Ms. Fujiwara of the Polaris Project.

She tells a story of one woman from an East Asian country who had a degree from a vocational school and was making a decent living in the social welfare field, but wanted to change careers and save enough money to study in Japan. She read an advertisement for a position in a café in Tokyo that would provide her with transportation and a free place to stay. The mamasan in charge of the bar even flew from Japan to meet her and interview her in person. Although her friends said it sounded sketchy, she decided to take the job and flew to Japan.

However, she soon realized that the café where she would work was really a hostess bar. Soon after she started working, the mamasan closed the bar, citing financial troubles. She provided her with a high-interest loan, and referred her to another hostess club. But her new club required dohan, which is “dating” clients, and usually included sex. Other women working at the bar advised her to do it, as it would be “dangerous” for her to refuse.

Two years later, unable to pay off her debt, she contacted Ms. Fujiwara. She was identified as a trafficking victim, and the authorities were contacted. However, soon after, she ceased contact with Ms. Fujiwara, and her whereabouts are currently unknown. The club she worked at is still in business."

I've heard a million stories like this. Fucking sad. I would say that the victims are usually aware that they are in for something like this, and choose to go anyway, which makes it no less sad.

Tobita (Google Images link), the largest red light district in Osaka, is truly a side of Japan you need to see to believe. It is one of only two areas in Osaka that I've been to where drug dealers are brazen enough to deal in the open. The article describes open air rooms, but when I went the girls were actually displayed behind large windows ala Amsterdam. The cops patrol the area on bicycles or on foot, but the only law enforcement I saw them doing was ticketing cars on the street (but ignoring the obviously yak ones - the local saying is that there are "as many yakuza as there are girls" in Tobita).

*note: I went to Tobita with a friend, three times over the space of 12 years to see what it was about. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to see a Japanese crack whore in a kimono, or for that matter what a Japanese cop getting paid off looks like.

This is a foodblogging post I have put off for a year and a half. The photos were waiting patiently to be edited on my desktop for all that time, and I continually ignored their pleas of "Post me! Post me!" So it is finally time for the story to be told:
A short time before encountering the Biwako Hot Dog, I wrote a post detailing the history of the Japanese fish sausage (which has turned into sort of a resource center for aspiring fish sausage makers worldwide - go read the comments!). So it was a happy coincidence that found us cruising the mountains around Lake Biwa, because the snowboarding trip we planned had been rained out. It was an absolutely miserable day, weather-wise. And the photos of death and decay on that link convey the mood we were in quite well.

The day was saved, however, by the appearance of a black and yellow kei (ultra compact 660cc class) van on the side of the road:

(click any of the images above to open a larger version)

The menu hanging off the back door of the van says:
Hot Dogs
w/wiener: 350 (yen)
w/hamburger patty: 350
w/ham: 350
Coffee: 100
Cola: 100

The photocopied papers stuck to the side windows were pretty crazy, stuff about how women are the bane of mankind and how God hates them (but men must respect them) and whatnot... The message was basically that the owner had had a hard life and gone completely batshit - we were intrigued.

The owner, an old fellow, was snoring when we walked up - classic! - and had apparently fallen asleep in the middle of preparations. He woke suddenly as we called to him and carried on with his actions exactly where he had left off, as if nothing had happened. We felt bad for waking him, and ordered three of each kind of dog. He was cool and gave us a couple extra - not many customers that day because of the crappy weather, I think.

The traditional Japanese hot dog is a hot dog purist's worst nightmare. Even discounting the type with a hamburger patty or a slice of ham, the wiener type is sacrilege mainly because it employs fish sausage (examples here and here). Because of the use of this quite-inferior sausage, the entire experience is ruined for approximately 100% (+/-.001%) of westerners. (This is especially ironic because of the word 欧風 ("European style") written on the passenger door of the van.) However, many Japanese profess to love this taste because it brings back memories of school lunches... Hey, to each his own - I sometimes yearn for the days of sloppy joes and tater tots, too.

Behold the traditional Japanese hot dog in its full glory:

What sets the real thing apart from all fish-dog wannabes is the curried cabbage shreds (prepared in the RINNAI oven seen in the photo third from the top), as well as the karashi (hot mustard) infused sauce slathered all over the top. Since the fish sausage has so little flavor (and actually the hamburger patty and "ham" were ALSO fish-based processed meat), the main flavor comes from the karashi, the cabbage, and the white bread bun. In a word: blah. However, if you ever have a chance to try this food item, it will give you a chance to taste the cafeteria youth of your Japanese friends, and in this regard, it has true cultural value (and at least it tastes better than okara, another contender for this honor)

Adam and my dad took a trip down to Kyushu this past April and the details are up over at Higo Blog. Most excellent photojournaling, bro!

I wanted to tag along, at least for a couple days, but I was busy at work (some things never change).

What the hell is that? (UPDATE: See this post for an explanation)

Go check out the whole post.

It's OK, he probably doesn't believe in that "survival of the fittest" shit anyway... Don't bring a bow to a hoof fight, biooootch!

Here's a really cool implementation of Google Maps: incidentlog.com

Some examples:

Recent incidents in Los Angeles

Bizarre incidents ("Assault with a yoyo" is a classic)

Sex offenders in the state of California

I chose examples close to home, but the site covers all of the US.

The most confusing terminology discussion I've ever read to the very end (because it has to do with food, of course!): If an English biscuit is an American cookie, what is an American biscuit called in England?

Hint: It's neither a lorry, a brolly, nor a faggot.

...................

BONUS BAKED GOODS RECIPE: LINK

"Fanny would never have a Spotted Dick unless it had a nice big blob of nice hot custard on it"

Run, Dick, run!

Recently, after returning home from work I've been hiking up Mt. Magata, conveniently located just down my street. Right now, the cicadas are out in full force and their incessant cries drown out the sound of my own footsteps as I ascend the paved hiking trail. The heat under the (natural, not planted!) forest canopy is quite oppressive, and the mosquitoes dive bomb at fresh meat quite mercilessly, so I usually only hike up and back down again.

Yesterday, though, I was feeling spunky, and after descending halfway down the slope I turned around and jogged another circuit up the steps. I like exercising up there because it's basically deserted; the only time I've seen people other than joggers up there is in the spring, for the majestic sakura bloom. Then it becomes crowded with the drunk and merry - basically the bane of my people-hating inaka existence. So it was with great disappointment that I spotted a young couple ascending the trail as I carefully made my final descent.

As I got closer, I realized that they were high school age, and that they were fighting about something. The guy was yelling at the girl in that ear-grating, wannebe-tough Japanese guy sort of way, and my feelings of resentment at them for invading my territory gradually gave way to pity for the girl for having an asshole boyfriend. More than anything, I did not want them to ruin my mountain vibe.

So as I passed them, I said in a friendly manner, "Hey, watch out - there's a snake at the top of the stairs!"

The girl actually bowed and thanked me politely for the heads-up, and the guy said excitedly, "let's go check it out!"

And with that, they bolted off, all worries forgotten.

.............

PS - The question you are burning to ask, it is not the point.

Found this interesting (and, as far as I can tell, accurate) node over at everything: How to marry a Japanese person

The author's conclusion is that "international marriages do not work under Japanese law." I think this a bit extreme, but some of the points outlined certainly defy all logic. Interesting reading, anyway.

Mixi is a great place to practice your Japanese,
Mixi is fairly well thought out.
Mixi is a great place to make you feel like you have many Japanese friends.

One thing though:
Why is Mixi seemingly filled with 5 million 12-year olds?

Holy shit! I just read a supercritical review of Speed Tribes! By a real Karl Taro hater!

Karl Taro does drugs! Karl Taro ineffectively mixes fact and fiction! Karl Taro BAD!!!

Now, I can see why some think the book is overrated (it was covered in both Wired and Time back in the day; it is apparently required reading in some Japanese courses back in the states). I can see how some might not agree with the subject matter. What I fail to see is how this can be considered a book not worth reading.

......................

As for the authenticity of it - did people like the characters in his book really exist in Japan? - I assure you, they still do, and in great numbers. If that doesn't matter, have a fun time living in that wonderful bubble you've created, even as you accuse others of doing the same.

I have a hole in my bottom left molar, I assume from a cavity. I thought I'd wait until I go to Bangkok to get it worked on (medical care in Bangkok is excellent and cheap), but I spent a few minutes examining it in the mirror, and I basically think the tooth is being held together by a previous filling. It probably needs to be removed, or at least I'll need a crown.

Going to the dentist in Japan is just a major pain in the ass - they make you visit multiple times for any work, sometimes even for routine cleaning. Nam had to get a couple fillings and a cleaning a couple years ago, and she ended up going every week for three or four months!

Plus, there's the whole thing about me being a gigantic pussy about dental work.

Nam sent a series of her crazy minpin mix, Gen, going after a lizard in our yard in Mahasarakham. (Click on any of the photos to open a larger version of it in a new window.)

Note the wild beady eyes of a predator on the hunt.

Can't quite figure out who is attacking who in this photo.

Nature is cruel, but one thing is apparent - our side yard at the new house is a veritable Thunderdome (and I already have an idea of who the current champion is).

I sat down to play with Illustrator again for the first time in a few years:

Now I'm just being bad.