I love going through the book offerings at Japanese shrines, where you are almost guaranteed to get some gems. At Kasuga Taisha (春日大社) in Nara, I found a series of childrens’ books entitled “Japan: A Good Country” (『日本いい国に』). Each chapter was designed to give children a lesson in how to be a good Japanese or [...]
My last day in Stavanger this time around, it started raining in the morning. I biked into town from my uncle’s office and was getting soaked along the way. I remember the many times my Japanese friends have asked me, “Why don’t you use an umbrella?” and I have either explained that I really don’t [...]
Monday is 17th May, big nationalist holiday in Norway. Lots of flag waving, hot dog eating, song singing, band playing, people marching, and occasional Sweden bashing. I’ll be following my cousins Alex and Frida around and will do whatever they do. I saw something interesting on “children’s TV” this morning, which I was glued to [...]
I’m not sure what all this is about, but it is going around (can anyone tell me where this bizarre idea comes from?) and I just don’t want to be left out of a fun game: 1. Grab the nearest book. 2. Open the book to page 23. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post [...]
There is a store in Kichijoji which sells very cheap T-shirts and sweaters which I often buy for the very reasonable price of around 500 yen. I love this store because, in addition to its other surfer and hip hop theme items, they have a fascinating range of products covered in the most bizarre English [...]
Sometimes Sayaka pats my head and in a patronizing voice says,「いい子いい子」Sometimes I pat her head and tell her she is an「いい子いい子」Today I tried to explain to her that what we essentially have going on here is an echo chamber (in which we each congratulate the other for being a “good little boy/girl”). She said, “No, [...]
I love the smurfs. I always have. My sister and I were raised on Smurf songs and the cartoons. Never, never did I (and I doubt Carleen did either) turn the analytical eye on the holy smurfs. Others have, though. Now, after all these years, do I realize where my deep socialistic instincts find their [...]
I added a half a dozen pictures from the last few months to the People Gallery.
There is a “gangster war” going on now between the huge Yamaguchi-gumi and something called the “Iijima-kai” (飯島会). Over the weekend there were a spat of murders of the Iijima-kai (More on the war in Japanese). I’m not usually interested in Japan’s crime, except when spending a pleasant evening with a couple of Yakuza movies. [...]
Here is a posting submitted by my friend Derek: I saw this article on slashdot, which probably means a lot of you have already seen it, but I thought others that might not have seen it already would find it humorous. A suggested read if you’ve ever attended a forum with a lot of literature [...]