Here are some pictures from Gion Matsuri I’ve been wanting to put up all week but bubbleshare has been acting up lately so… Anyway, the first set are from last Sunday, I got a couple of tickets to go and look inside two of the festival floats which was pretty cool. I went a day early to avoid the crowds. Still had to wait though.
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The second set are from Monday, Yoiyoiyoiyama when the festival really gets going and the streets are littered with impromptu street bars and stalls selling chocolate coated bananas, tako-yaki, fried chicken, all kinds of crap. We all put on our best yukata and jimbei and strolled around and soaked up that special festival atmosphere.Thankfully it had rained earlier in the day, so it was relatively cool for us.
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These last couple of pictures are from 3 am Thursday morning when I encountered a friendly group of riot police on my way home…
Not sure what they were up to. Didn’t stick around to find out.
Before I sign out for the evening, here’s a link to Joss Wheedon’s latest creation, a three act musical super-villain comedy which you can watch for free until Sunday when it is due to vanish from the net like the snow in springtime. I watched the first two acts yesterday, and was entranced. The third and final act goes up tomorrow. Watch it while it’s free! Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog
Ha ha. I was going to write about Edgar Allan Poe’s wacky little novel “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” today, as I just finished it last night. However, I fear I am too weary for literary criticism, so I’ll just post a few links and offer some lame meanderings on gender issues instead.
Since yesterday there have been a heap of articles on Google News about gay marriages in California. The very same day I spotted this article on the BBC website about “gay brain differences“. It seems brain scans have shown that gay people have brains shaped very much like people of the opposite sex (i.e. gay men’s brains are shaped like heterosexual women’s brains and lesbian brains are shaped like the brains of men). Nothing too surprising there really, (and I wonder why nobody thought of doing this before…) but it does offer proof that, as one scientist put it “there is no argument any more - if you are gay, you are born gay”. In other words, it’s COMPLETELY NATURAL TO BE GAY. Of course those of us living in the 21st century knew that already, but sadly there are still those who have a problem with our queer bretheren (and sisteren). Here’s a short video about the marriages in California. It’s worth watching till the end for an appearance by Star Trek’s Mr Sulu: George Takei, who is going to marry his long-term partner Brad Altman, and looks really super pleased about it. Actually, the infectiously cheesy grins on their faces are really something to behold. Truly a happy couple. I hope they both live long and prosper.
“It’s about love“. Now, who could argue with that?
Meanwhile back in Japan: Sega creates robot girlfriend. Now, what’s that about?
Here’s a creepy story (really creepy if you have ever seen Juon) about a woman who snuck into a 57 year old man’s house and started living in the storage space above his closet.
… the man had become increasingly uneasy as he found food missing and couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t alone… LINK
Apparently, police suspect she was a serial closet hopper, moving from house to house. Wow, eh?
The Sun Always Shines On Your Greens
There’s yet another post up on Deep Kyoto tonight of vegan & organic restaurant Hale ～晴れ～ which means “sunny”. Hmm. I’m sensing a trend for “sunny” organic restaurants here; Sunny Place, Sunshine Cafe…Now here’s a bunch of Japan related links so I can avoid actually writing anything.
Burakumin Photographs by Masaru Goto
http://www.globalcompassion.com/ has an exhibition of photos by Masaru Goto of Burakumin:
The Burakumin are a nearly invisible (yet identifiable) group of Japanese people. They are the remnant of a caste system that formally passed away long ago. Their ancestors were the untouchables. Despite being racially and ethnically Japanese through and through, the Burakumin still face discrimination and struggle together under the weight of their shared history. (Quoted from globalcompassion.com)
The photographs, a series of portraits, are colorful and reveal a remarkable zest for life in each of the participants (like the guy who says he wants to die shouting “Whoo!”). Each picture is followed by a short account of each persons experiences. I found bamboo artisan Keigin Ishida’s story of his relationship with his father especially touching. LINK TO MASARU GOTO’S EXHIBITION
Whale Meat SCANDAL!!!
Recently, Greenpeace have been making a big hullabaloo about Japanese whalers filching whale meat at the tax-payers expense. Now the news has gone global. Here’s a link to the BBC article: LINK And here’s what Greenpeace have to say about it:
We did it! Within 72 hours of our exposé of corruption in the whaling industry and embezzlement of whale meat, 40,000 Greenpeace supporters wrote to Japanese officials demanding an investigation.Despite denials from the company that runs the whaling ship that the stolen whale meat was just “souvenirs” the Tokyo public prosecutor’s office agreed there were grounds for an investigation. It’s working!
By law, the sale of whale meat outside the official “scientific whaling” programmme is not supposed to happen — all proceeds are supposed to offset the taxpayer-subsidized whaling. This means the entire whaling programme is illegal and needs to have its permits revoked and subsidies cancelled — let’s get 80,000 messages in the NEXT 72 hours demanding that! LINK TO GREENPEACE CAMPAIGN
Don’t Read This if You’re Eating
I wonder why it is, that despite broadly agreeing with pretty much everything Greenpeace stands for, I find myself increasingly irritated by them and reluctant to post links to their campaigns. Ah, I know. It’s because of ridiculous videos like this. What genius came up with the idea of “average Joe vomiting off the back of a ship” as a marketing campaign? How is that appealing? Really? Ah, oh well…
Speaking of vomit, this article isn’t particularly enlightening but the headline kind of grabbed me: 54 sickened at hospital after farmer’s chemical-fuelled vomit generates toxic gas. Wow, eh?
Thanks to Jules for this Mainichi Daily News article:
TSUKUBAMIRAI, Ibaraki — The municipal government here has cancelled a lecture on domestic violence scheduled for next Sunday in response to protests from opponents, city sources said.
Opponents criticized the Law for the Prevention of Spousal Violence and the Protection of Victims, which allows the government to provide shelters for domestic violence victims, on the grounds that it would lead to the breakdown of families. LINK
Bloody hell, eh?
A funny sort of a day today; my first class being unusually well behaved and even the most intransigently awkward students being extremely well-behaved and doing exactly what I told them to do, I was early on in a very good mood. But then the last class of the day, which is usually friendly and fun, was today oddly awkward and unfriendly and unfortunately needed a bit of shouting at to get it into line… A further example of 竹に上下の節あり I suppose. Sometimes those jointy knobbly bits come in unexpected places.
Three recent posts on Deep Kyoto are:
Getting Around Town, A Guide to Import Stores, and a short piece on the Omen noodle restaurant. Take a look if you so desire.
There’s an interesting cogitation by David Cromwell on medialens today on one of the most contentious issues of WWII: whether or not the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. It’s an old debate that swings back and forth between the orthodox line that the bombings were a necessary evil and the revisionist view that it was a cynical tactical manoevre. People tend to plump down on one side or other of the argument and feel very strongly about it too. Why is this article worth reading? Well, for one thing: “Despite the topic’s near-disappearance from news agendas and contemporary debate, the threat of nuclear annihilation sadly remains. Humanity still stands at the edge of the abyss.” And also this article does seem to give a fuller picture:
Western historians debating the reasons for the end of the war have focused heavily on the U.S. ‘decision’ to drop the atomic bomb.[2] But there has been relatively little attention devoted to the deliberations among the Japanese wartime ruling elite which led to surrender. Even less has been known about Soviet decision-making and the Soviet entry into the Pacific War against Japan.
A stumbling block until recently has been that no historian has been sufficiently fluent in English, Japanese and Russian to investigate the primary archival material – including internal government documents, military reports and intelligence intercepts - in all three languages. This partly explains why historical debate in the West has been so focused on the Truman administration’s motives and policy-making: this, after all, could be pursued on the basis of English-language material. For example, in 1965, ‘revisionist’ historian Gar Alperovitz published an influential book, ‘Atomic Diplomacy’, in which he argued that use of the atomic bombs was militarily unnecessary and was intended as a show of U.S. strength against Soviet power. There has been furious debate about this for several decades… LINK
On a tangent, there’s another interesting article up on the Mainichi Daily News website on Japanese Cyborg Farmers. As Japan’s population is aging and many young people are leaving the countryside in favour of big city life, researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have built a robotic ex0-skeleton for old people so they can keep on farming well into their dotage. Marvellous. Now it’s ten o’clock already and I still haven’t eaten dinner. Why did I forget to eat?
This is just one of those things that always puts a smile on my face when I see it. However, though I’ve seen Japanese rockabilly dancers doing their thing in both Fukushima and Tokyo this is the first time I’ve seen it in Kyoto (just outside City Hall last Sunday incidentally). And there does seem to be an important difference here. In Kansai, girls do it too! Fukushima and Tokyo rockers were always a pretty lary looking bunch of guys, but here in Kansai rockabilly dancing appears to be a family affair because these guys bring their wives and daughters to join in the fun. How nice. Enjoy!
Browsing Gizmodo this evening, (slogan: so much in love with shiny new toys it’s unnatural) I came across this very silly and thereby highly amusing soya sauce bottle. LINK.
And here’s an admirable man who somehow manages to combine religious belief with a creditable degree of common sense: LINK.
And, um, here’s some Sade. Just because she nice.
I just read this very entertaining piece by the SF writer Charlie Stross on his impressions after a recent visit to Japan. Having been here ten years, it’s refreshing to see this country through the eyes of someone to whom Japan is new and exciting, and especially through the eyes of a writer who is so concerned with what comes next. It also gave me a little thrill when he was describing a restaurant that looks like someone’s house (because it is) and I suddenly realised - I know that place! - I know that cat! - I was there the other week! Link.
And then I found this in the comments and it made me laugh too: Earthquake Sets Japan Back to 2147.
