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Kibune is very pretty (but very cold) at this time of year…

A walk in the woods…

Kibune shrine….
And there were lights on the river. I’m not sure why…
On the way home, they turned the lights off on the train so we could enjoy the sight of all the illuminated red and gold leaves around us, and everybody said “Aaaaah!”.

Message from Avaaz:

This morning, we received this tense demand for action from from Liberata Rumumba, a refugee and women’s leader in Eastern Congo pleading for Europe to send peacekeepers to protect her people, (click below to watch).

We know how to help. Last week, Avaaz ran a hard-hitting advertisement in The Times of London, pressing UK leaders to support a European force or risk responsibility for genocide — the British Africa minister called us immediately — and the British position shifted.

Now we’re challenging other EU leaders, taking this effective ad campaign Europe-wide – starting by placing ads in El Pais in Spain, Dagens Nyheter in Sweden, The European Voice in Brussels and NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands. The Times ad was paid for by 300 small donations from Avaaz members. If just 3000 of us donate in the next 48 hours we can run ads across Europe before it’s too late – if we raise more funds than necessary we’ll put them towards further similar campaigns. Let’s chip in what we can to help the people of the Congo. LINK

Here’s a couple of videos from last night’s session at Woodnote. The first one is just a short clip because my camera ran out of memory, but I’d like you to take a look at it anyway because the fiddle player is really very good indeed. He also (bizarrely) looks kind of Irish.

This second one is longer, as I filmed it first and I think I overheard that it’s a Canadian waltz. Nice place this, full of softly spoken gentle souls, enjoying the simple pleasure of making music together. Just watching them makes me want to learn an instrument myself and I shall have to go back again for more…

A little bit of genius from Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas:

From “Free To Be… You And Me“.

Some time ago I set my 3rd grade writing class students the homework assignment of writing about their ideal partner. What kind of qualities would such a man possess? Well, I was marking their homework yesterday and it seems the two most popular qualities are having heaps of money and caring about fashion. This could get depressing, I thought, as I read for the umpteenth time sentences like: I want to marry a rich man because I want to buy many things, or I want a partner who cares about fashion because appearance is most important. Then, like a beam of radiant light in a very dark place, came this thoughtful piece about wanting “someone who is a curious person and tries to do new things” because (and I kid you not) “Knowing one is ignorant of things is the starting point for a real desire for wisdom.” Wow, eh? It seems some of the students are taking in some of those Buddhist ideas I mentioned a while back.

And in that train of thought here is this month’s message from Hozouji:

自己を
亡ぼす
ものは
うぬぼれ心

自己　＝　じこ　＝ one’s self
亡ぼす　＝　ほろぼす　＝ ruin, destroy
うぬぼれ　＝ conceit, vanity
心　＝　こころ　＝ heart, mind, spirit

The thing
that destroys
one’s self
is conceit

A common theme in Buddhist thought is the search for one’s real self. Conceit, vanity, having too high opinion of oneself, is the easiest way to lose sight of who you really are. If only you could see yourself as others see you, you might be very surprised by who you really are. This story today on boingboing on the conceited brokers at Merrill Lynch, is a good example of how much damage conceit can do, not just to yourself but to those around you. Recently rescued by the Bank of America, it seems Merrill Lynch employees have a tendency to look down on their relatively lower class saviours:

Merrill Lynch is bullish on snobbery and status. These snobs, wearing more expensive suits, consorted to run their company into the ground. Now they look down on the company that rescued them and the people who work there as not being worthy, not sharing their own high status. It’s another sign that failure will not humble Wall Street or cause them to change their ways. LINK

It’s worth reading if only for the brief account of the broker who belatedly realised his whole life was a lie.

Incidentally, the word ほろぼす can be written two ways like this: 亡ぼす or this: 滅ぼす. They have pretty much the same meaning, but the second kanji contains the elements of water and fire (can you spy them?); water overthrows fire see. 亡 was developed from the image of a person (the top part) being concealed or hidden by something (the bottom part). We often see this kanji in the word 亡くなる or “nakunaru” meaning to die. In this case death removes the person from view. So this meaning of ほろぼす is made much stronger, I think. Conceit is in fact, the death of the soul.

Here’s a couple of things I found on the BBC tonight that I found interesting. A poll by Barnardo’s has found that more than half the UK population thinks children are no better than animals, so the charity has launched a video campaign against this “disturbing intolerance” of children. There’s no doubt there are a lot of cheeky young gits about on the streets, but the level of anger, fear and hate this seems to have induced is disturbing indeed:

At Barnardo’s, we want people to recognise that children who are troublesome and engage in antisocial behaviour are often those most in need of support. Our work demonstrates that the majority of children who start down the wrong path can be helped to change direction. LINK

Doubt it? Check out this video of an educational success story on the Seacroft Estate in Leeds LINK TO BBC VIDEO. It’s pretty impressive.

The light-up at Kiyomizudera continues until December 7th.
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The Daily Show ran this short piece last week on just how dumb and tantrum prone Sarah Palin is:

Basically the critics accuse her of being stupid, ill-educated and prone to tantrums. Sarah Palin has since hit back by calling them “jerks” and saying “it’s not fair“… thereby pretty much proving their point. Well, one thing we can all be thankful for is that this nasty little hate-monger has been kept out of the White House. Only, apparently she wants to give it another shot in 2012 if God shows her “the open door”: “I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is,” says Palin (eloquently) and “if there is an open door in [20]12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plough through that door.”

How do you plough through a door? Please God – NO!!!

Meanwhile, here in Japan, we celebrated Taisho’s birthday at Joao last Saturday and followed the party by going to Alphabet Ave. and drinking till dawn. Here’s a picture of my gang all lined up at the bar:

Aren’t they lovely?

This is what happens to them if I play with them at Photfunia:

Last night I went to Woodnote which is a fine little 25 year old cafe in the Kitaoji area where you can hear Irish music and drink organic coffee and eat cinnamon toast. And you can see pictures of that here: LINK

And tomorrow I’m meeting up with Kageyama-san for the first time since Small Town Talk closed down in February and I’m really looking forward to it!

At the clinic this morning, one of the English conversation group’s was what chinese character would you choose to sum up this year? I chose the kanji for hope: 望. Barack Obama winning the American Presidency this week has given me hope. It’s the first really good news I can remember hearing for the last eight years. I was so happy I couldn’t even bring myself to blog about it for the last couple of days. The world just seems like such a better place knowing that the moronic Bush years are on their way out and somebody with intelligence and eloquence is on his way in.

Not that I am under any illusions that Obama will be anywhere near as progressive as I would wish him to be. But he is certainly a step in the right direction. And maybe if everyone who voted for change keeps pressuring for change, then we can keep on stepping that way. Writer Charlie Stross has a list up on his blog of the kind of changes he would like to see: LINK

And here’s a list of Obama’s actual campaign promises:

* Reduce the US’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol
* Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months and keep no permanent bases in the country
* Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe
* Close the Guantanamo Bay detention center
* Double US aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculoses and Malaria
* Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to pursue peaceful resolution of tensions
* De-politicize military intelligence to avoid ever repeating the kind of manipulation that led the US into Iraq
* Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur
* Only negotiate new trade agreements that contain labor and environmental protections
* Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015 LINK to barackobama.com (via avaaz.org)

Now they don’t look too bad now, do they? Hopefully, if, during the remainder of his term, Bush can restrain himself from destroying the world entire in one last cataclysmic burst of incompetence, we can then see just how Obama keeps his promises. And here’s a couple of outstanding headlines from The Onion to help keep us from entering into a new era of smug self-satisfaction:

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job

Now for some happy music from Michael Franti:

Download the full album: All Rebel Rockers or order the album on CD from amazon JAPAN USA UK

I just tried out this GenderAnalyzer thingy. It uses artificial intelligence to find out if a blog is written by a man or a woman and apparently it usually works pretty well. So I tapped in urls for both this blog and for deepkyoto and do you know, in both cases, I’m a lass. Who would have thunk it? I wonder what criteria they are using to judge one’s gender by. Perhaps I need to write more about football and erm… cars?

Anyway, we just had a glorious three day weekend so here’s what I’ve been up to…

Friday

Fine wine and cake at Bocca del Vino. If you want to treat yourself or someone else to something reet posh – this is the place for you.  I spent over 20,000 and I don’t regret a single yen. Here’s a picture of some very very luscious cake:

After that we moved onto Joao for some Halloween frolics…
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And finally onto Kisui where Setchan was being a cheeky monkey:
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Saturday

Lovely weather so we had a picnic by the river and cycled up to Kamigamo where I prayed for some luck in regards to (ahem!) future endeavours. When I got home I discovered two very exciting (yet entirely unconnected) emails from magazine editors who had discovered Deep Kyoto and want to work with me. I’ll let you know more about that as and when it develops.
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Sunday

Went to a bar called Ringo where they play Beatles hits ALL THE TIME. Weirdly, I enjoyed it. I also finally managed to finish this: In Search of… Vinyl.

Monday

A return trip to Kobe. Took in China Town, Ijinkan and Harbourland. I also managed to remember where Piccolo is. Kageyama-san introduced me to this rock bar – a “Deep Kobe” institution – the last time I was in Kobe. This time the master of the joint was completely wasted, so much so he fell asleep standing up and could not be awoken. Fortunately he has some very honest customers who left their money with him when they left… Most funtertaining.
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