First thing today; there’s a link here to a rather swish “greenmyapple” campaign for making compootas a bit more enviroment/children-friendly. They are full of nasty chemicals see. Click here to see what it’s about: http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/about.html
They have a bunch of fun-looking activities there like designing your own T-shirts and making videos and what-not, but for those of us with less time to kill you can just do the 2-minute-send-a-campaign-letter-thing.
The same goes for this stop illegal logging campaign: http://write-a-letter.greenpeace.org/70
Rik Abel has requested more pictures of “food and bars”, so here’s where I went last night. Very cheap and very tasty 将月 (Shougetsu) which sits on Mikage Doori just east of Higashioji Doori and is super popular with University Students (it’s that cheap/tasty combo see). What do they serve there? お好み焼き (okonomiyaki - “stuff you liked fried”). Watch out for those kanji if you are in Japan - could be the most important kanji you get to learn. Here’s a reminiscence. A long time ago, in Fukushima I bumped into two aquaintances on the street one night. One was a large, loud, obnoxious American ( and thus very popular with the ladies… why is that always so?) named Thad and the other was a disenchanted (and vaguely-fancying-Thad) artistic type named Carrie Van Horn, and I said “Where are you two off to then?” And they said “We are going to eat “Japanese Pizza”. Wanna come?” and I thought: “Great! Pizza!” and got all excited (I love pizza see) and went with them and found to my intense disappointment I was eating this weird eggy thing covered in mayonnaise and fishflakes. With Americans.
The moral of this story is: don’t be close minded about food. Okonomiyaki is egg heaven on the tongue. There all kinds and varieties; Hiroshima-style, Osaka-style, Kyoto-style, Tokyo’s モダン焼き (Modern Yaki) - it doesn’t matter, they’re all good. If you can - eat it. Here’s a site where you can get a recipe: http://www.japan-guide.com/r/e100.html but basically, it’s just eggs, flour and chopped cabbage and whatever else you feel like sticking in there (hence the name).
A couple of years ago I took my sister, Christina, to Hiroshima and ordered three servings of Hiroshima-yaki for myself, herself, and John ( herself’s better half) and as I was getting a bit miffed about doing all of the ordering all of the time, I decided to get my revenge by having my sister’s version stuffed with natto (basically rotten beans). And she loved it. But she didn’t like tofu… or sushi… What’s with that?
This is what we had last night, the hand of the waiter is ladling liberal servings of okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise on top. I had いか (”ika” - squid) in mine. 
The final touch, a topping of dried bonito fish flakes. They come alive in the heat and wave around suggestively at you…
Finally, (because we fat pigs) we tried something new. The menu read オムのっけそば (Omnokkesoba), what could this mean? I surmised it might be a sort of オムライス (”Om-rice” - basically an omlette stuffed with stir-fried rice and usually topped with ketchup) style thing, only instead of rice inside the omlette, fried soba noodles! And I was right. And was it good?
Yep.
BE 
Every Wednesday I teach 4 classes at Kyoto Girls. Most classes are fine. But one class is just 50 minutes of pure spite. Every week. Every Wednesday. So, I went and talked to their homeroom teacher today and he said he would have words. Whether that will change things I have no idea but I think I know who was puncturing my bicycle last term…
They aren’t all Toru’s children though. They are just kids from the neighborhood. Toru lives out in Shiga (quite close to lake Biwa) and they don’t see a lot of white folks out there (we are two a penny in Kyoto) so the kids were all excited…. but shy at the same time. It was kind of funny the way they kept trying to get each other to say something to me and then running away again. Now you may have noticed that all the local kids are GIRLS. Toru has this theory that the electromagnetic waves coming from people’s mobile phones are somehow repressing that vital male X-gene. But I have no idea about that. This next picture features the inimitable Hyon Ju.
And after dinner, a game cleverly constructed by Riyo, Nodoka and Honoka from cans and pebbles… And I got well beaten by a seven year old…
On Friday we went to see the Alphonse Mucha exhibition in the Isetan Art Museum at Kyoto Station. The exhibition will continue until October 1st. Worth seeing.
Hyon Ju couldn’t help wondering why so many of the ladies in Mucha’s seem to be giving the finger. Like this one for instance…
This next one seems to be toying with the idea:
Here’s a piece entitled Olive & Anchovy Pizza avec la Biere.
I teach part-time at a company in Yamashina and last night one of the students, Toru, invited Hyon Ju and I to his house for dinner. We had a very pleasant evening with his family. This is Honoka. She’s a fashion designer.
This is Nodoka. She’s an artist.
This next picture is entitled “Michael”. I think the likeness is stunning.
This one is called “Hyon Ju”. Note the interesting technique of drawing the hair first for what I like to call the “Sadako Effect”.
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