In an attempt to actually make some money from my unhealthy blogging obsesson, I’ve been tweaking this blog (and Deep Kyoto also) a lot recently; adding an extra column and a lot of amazon stuff, mp3 players etc… Let me know if it get’s annoying. Up on Deep Kyoto tonight there is a fresh post on cafe and cake shop Sugary. And on Japanese Reboot there are some foxy phrases here, here and also here.

Japan Focus has posted a nice piece of non-fiction manga (in English!) by Mizuki Shigeru the creator of the famous youkai series “GeGeGe no Kitarou“. Entitled War and Japan it starts off explaining how it was for Japanese people in general during the war and then tells of Shigeru’s own experiences serving overseas (he lost an arm and many many friends). I read it yesterday and found it very interesting indeed. There’s quite a long introduction to it by Matthew Penney, but you can skip that and just scroll down to the cartoon if you want to. Shigeru tells his own story better than anyone else can. LINK

This news today in the Independent and the commentary on Worldchanging that we are all effectively doomed, (I mean even more certainly doomed than we already thought we were) was quite depressing.

Finally, I found this video of bad-ass Taro Aso on boingboing this morning and it made me laugh despite being doomed, so here you are.