Mamiya Milk Moustache

25 February, 2006 (03:08) | Japan - Family, Japan - Photography | By: Kurt

It felt good, and the results are pleasing. I dug out the Mamiya 645 camera earlier this week, half expecting to find fungus or something, not having used it in over a year. No fungus apparent, just a dead battery, which didn’t affect metering as there is none with the prism finder I have, but [...]

Asian bloggers all look the same, apparently

18 February, 2006 (03:36) | Japan - Blogging, Vanity Publishing | By: Kurt

Here’s a variation on that “they all look alike” phenomenon that seems to afflict the vision of many who look towards the inscrutable East: Linkology – How the Most-Linked-To Blogs Relate. In connection with a “Blog Establishment” cover feature piece, New York Magazine has assembled a list of the 50 most linked-to blogs and mapped [...]

A first taste of snow

21 January, 2006 (20:55) | Japan - Weather | By: Kurt

Today we got our first, and perhaps only, snowfall of the winter in the Tokyo area. This was really Kaika’s first time out in the snow (he had a cold when it snowed last year). At first he couldn’t deal with the flakes landing on his tongue and on his eyelashes, but he quickly warmed [...]

Color commentator

15 January, 2006 (12:16) | Japan - Sports | By: Kurt

This is Demon Kokugure, a performer and artist, and serious sumo fan. Here he is doing commentary for NHK’s sumo broadcast (he’s doing a full 5 hours for them, very unusual). Don’t judge this book by the cover, this guy knows his sumo, frontwards and back. I’m looking forward to being able to hear his [...]

The arbitrary difficulty of language

12 January, 2006 (01:54) | Japan - Language | By: Kurt

A friend recently wrote the following on his blog about his son (1 year, 4 months old): I have to work harder at teaching him [English] words, but I get the feeling he will speak more Japanese first, because there are so many easy two-syllable words for him to pronounce easily in Japanese, and most [...]

Ise Shrine

2 January, 2006 (15:59) | Japan - Travel | By: Kurt

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Given that part of the purpose of this trip was to get away from all the various goings on around New Years time, it’s highly ironic — or just stupid — [...]