hmmn

I finished the video below a few days before the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan and has caused so much destruction and loss of life. It didn’t seem appropriate at the time to mention it at the time.

The other night we and a couple of other families were doing fireworks in the park, something of an annual summer ritual, especially for Japanese young folk. (As an aside, it was something of a tradition for me and my brother as well, growing up in Hawaii, to set off fireworks and sparklers at New [...]

(Above posted with a debt to Antipixel, whose composite from 4 years ago gave me the idea). We make it an annual occurrence to go to the Toda – Itabashi Fireworks Festival which is held on the Arakawa River that forms the border between Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture, where we live. (We’ve only missed one, [...]

Despite having to work both days last weekend (will get a 4-day weekend this week in exchange), because it was the early shift I was able to come home early enough to enjoy some local events with the family. On Saturday night we went to our local neighborhood 盆踊り(bon odori, or bon dance festival) which [...]

A couple of months ago I visited the house of one of my students, in part to see her collection of Hina dolls. Yesterday, I visited her house again, this time to see her collection of 五月人形 (gogatsu ningyou, or samurai dolls). I’ve uploaded an album of them, taking care this time to better annotate [...]

Two performers of a sort, unrelated to each other, except that they were both at Omiya Park yesterday for what should no doubt be the last of 花見 (hanami, cherry blossom viewing), both performing. In the woman’s case, she was in her own カラオケ (karaoke) space, with a tape player and plenty of 演歌 (enka) [...]