Cherry Blossoms Falling Down

So Yasukuni Shrine made the news again because a Chinese diplomat cancelled a meeting with Prime Minister Koizumi to protest his continued visits to the shrine.

As the shrine is topical Mari & I thought we'd go and have a gander. With the help of that little wheel thing in your mousey you too can too.

Chocks away!



On exiting the Kudanshita subway you'll be near the Budokan. You may remember it from such exciting blogger posts as My Points in Dot Life. Well this isn't the Budokan, but its the building next to it. It's way old looking and dignified looking, isn't it. Now if only I'd walked across the street to it I could tell you what it is. But I didn't, so I can't.

I'm a veritable encyclopedia of information such as this.

As it was a fine spring day the walk to the shrine was accompanied by the dulcet tones of stirring patriotic exhortations blasting from the black vans of the right-wingers. Sorry I don't have a picture of them. Imagine several black vans with loudhailers atop and large Japanese flags unfurled from them. They're a common enough sight around the shrine's area this time of year.



Three minutes walk from Kudanshita subway gets one to the first gate. It was pretty sunny today, and there seems to be some weird whiteness in the centre of the picture. I hope I haven't stolen that woman's soul. Or maybe I can see dead people? Or she might be an angel?



Most stoic dog statues and paddle pop stick with writing must be passed before going under the gate. This doggie has a mate over on the other side. This other doggie was camera shy and declined to be in the photo.



Here are some mighty big wooden doors through which the shrine can be spied.



And here 'tis. Really not as big as one would expect for such a famous shrine. But it's more famous (or infamous if you happen to be a Chinese diplomat) for its significance than anything else.



And here is the War Museum at Yasukuni Shrine. Today was my second visit to it, and it's a really interesting museum. There's quite a lot of English used in the displays, and I recommend it to any English speaking (or reading) visitor to Tokyo. Within it you'll find the old adage disproved that "History is written by the winner".

Done and Done

Yesterday I finally finished reading and seeing some stuff I'd wanted to read and see.

Reading was The Lord of the Rings series. Yes, I'd never read it before. Weird, as when I was in high school I read The Hobbit and loved it. But for some reason I never moved onto the other books.

Then when the first movie came out I so liked it that I decided to read the book. But everyone else here was reading it, and many didn’t like it. "Too much singing and wandering around in the woods," they said. Hmmm, that didn't seem like the movie. Most of the people I knew never finished the first book.

But then the second movie came out, and I liked it more than the first. So I thought I would read them, but I'd wait until after the third movie came out so that I could enjoy it without knowing anything about what happens.

Well after the third movie I really wanted to read them. But I thought I'd revisit The Hobbit first. It was just as enjoyable as when I was a kid. But now I could appreciate the writing more.

I moved onto The Fellowship of the Ring and found that while I could understand why some people didn't enjoy the slower parts, I found that the characters, imagination, and the writing just swept me right through them. I couldn't wait for The Two Towers.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to Middle Earth. I'd bought The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring separately, but they were part of a set. They had the same neat black covers with runes, and the fannish collector in me wanted The Two Towers and The Return of the King to match. It shouldn't have been too hard, yet whenever I checked in a bookstore I wasn't finding them. Sure other printings were there, but I wanted my black covered ones.

Finally I found them about six months ago. But I was busy doing other stuff and so put them on the bookshelf to read when I had more time. Time, in its fashion, never materialized, but just kept moseying on by, and I forgot to read them. Then about a month ago I saw them and decided I had better make some time. I had been using my train rides for Japanese study, but now this become LotR time.

I'm a pretty slow reader, and I don't help this by rereading a sentence, paragraph or page if I didn't understand it, or I really liked it. This last foible was a major problem for these books. Yes, the prose is sometimes pretty purple, more so in the last book where Aragon becomes almost unbearably pompous, but that's part of the enjoyment. The writing just evokes high fantasy. Real people don't talk like that (except for some fanboy role-players), but it just fits in these books.

And so for the last month my train rides have taken me to Middle Earth rather than to locales around Tokyo. It was almost disappointing to yesterday finish Return of the King, because now the story is over, and I really want it to continue.

And if anything the movies have grown in my appreciation. While the movies changed, added to, and reinterpreted parts of the books, I still feel that breadth of imagination in them. I'm glad that the films aren't slavish to the books.

Wow, I have rambled, and I haven't even finished what I wanted to say. Still I'd better move onto Doctor Who before bedtime, which is just around the corner.

Against all expectations I got to see episode 2 and 4 of the new series. I really enjoyed them. They were piss funny. It was like watching Doctor Who again, but revamped in a good way. I do hope though that it moves away from having one story per show, as even after viewing only 2 shows the format made the pacing a little predictable. But this minor grumble is just because I'm an old fart who has to grumble about something.

New Doctor Who. Watch it, it's good.

And another thing about LotR...

Winston 1 Environment Zero

Yesterday at work was "Zero Trash Day". It is an initiative to make us reflect on the amount of trash we create every day. We are supposed to take home with us any trash that we make during the day. To ensure this the trash bins are taken away for the day.

There are some exceptions. Wet trash such as food waste can still be disposed of. It has a separate bin. Paper and other recyclables can still be put into their recycle bins.

I’ve unofficially labeled “Zero Trash Day” as “Hide Trash in One’s Locker Day”.
Today is unofficially “Double Trash Day”.

The Movie Maven
Kingdom of Heaven
I liked it. Kingdom of Heaven reminded me a lot of Troy. Big battles, charging horses, strapping men hacking each other into quivering bloody sushi. It certainly delivers in the area of CG battle scenes.

But it also tells us that Muslims and Christians should be able to live side by side like ebony and ivory on a piano keyboard. If only more would listen to Maco and Whacko, I mean Jacko, the world would be a better place.

And Kingdom of Heaven is not content with the subject matter of religion, as it also mixes in a dose of politics. With a bit more sex it could have had something to offend everyone.

Orlando Bloom obviously bulked up for the role, but doesn’t flex his acting muscles as he plays the character as the strong, silent type. I would have liked to have seen a few more than zero soliloquies from him meditating on the nature of faith, but probably that’s just me. It’s a movie that I’d like to see an extended version of as I felt that there were scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor.

For those who want to take a rolliking Middle Eastern History 101 Lite.

Chandler Bing's Weather Report

In Tokyo today, could the weather be any nicer!

And my brother has (finally) written some more about the baby.
Ted, you may wanna read this for your preparedness homework .

House of Way Less Than 1000 Corpses

When one pays an expert for advice, one should listen to him or her. Now if only I'd payed the Divine Ms. L for her freely given advice about the ork-tork named flickr [sic.] I could have saved myself the hours of frustration that I had had with that previous program I was using to post pictures to Winston's World. May it's accursed name never darken this blog again.

So these are some of the pictures I wanted to post from the days we spent in Shuzenji during Iron Pyriten Week. These are of Mari's folk's house. Mari's parents live in the countryside, nestled at the base of a small hill. Sorry about the quality of the pictures, but they were taken with the phone (5 years ago that would have made no sense), and I have no balance.

Balance come into it as I am standing on a tree stump in their back yard looking back at the house. The hill is behind me. As you can see they have a small garden. It even has some tea in it. They were picking the leaves when we were there, and so we were able to have fresh tea each night with dinner.



This is looking from the back door of the house, back up the hill to the tree stump I was standing on. If you had x-ray eyes and had been there, you'd know this to be true.



And this is back on the stump looking away from the house toward the hill. You can see the backyard feature that no home is complete without - graves! Yes, the house is built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Spooky hey, and also a fitting picture to post with today being Black Friday.



The Idiotic Thing I Did Today
I forgot to change trains. Realized my mistake about 5 stops after my stop. As I was reading LotR: The Return of the King, I think that this boo-boo is acceptable.

A Confederacy of Dunce

I’ve noticed that I’m doing some pretty stupid things lately. Some might say that it’s not just lately, and I wouldn’t argue the point. Probably the silliest was the aforementioned borrowing of a shopping basket. But the list goes on:

• Last Friday I taught the wrong lesson at school. I taught this week’s lesson by mistake. What is supposed to happen first is the Japanese English teacher teaches the class a grammar point in Japanese. My class follows this, and its purpose is to give the students the opportunity to practice this grammar point using English. I should have realized by the blank stares of the students that few understood what I was talking about, but really there was no way to tell the difference from the blank stares I usually receive due to their boredom.

• When I’m riding an exercise bike at the gym I usually watch TV. The sound comes from an earphone, thus I'm mostly isolated from outside noises. As the TV is in Japanese, I have to concentrate fairly hard to keep up. Combining this with the fatigue from the exercise, and mentally I’m in another place. This lead up sounds like I'm trying to justify my stupidity. Well the other day I was startled when someone walked in front of me. So I grabbed wildly for the brakes – of the exercise bike.

• Mari and I want to the convenience store to buy some milk. I went to the back of the store where the milk is, while Mari with her long straight, black hair and wearing jeans, t-shirt, and a denim jacket stood next to the magazine rack flicking through a fashion magazine. After picking up the milk I walked back to the magazine rack and cheekily asked the girl standing there with long, straight black hair wearing jeans, t-shirt, and a denim jacket, if she’d buy me a porno magazine or two. I think you can see where this is going.

• It’s not because I'm not a manly man, but because the air is so dry that I spray toner on my face. Yes sir, that’s the reason. Anyway, let’s move on. On the shelf the toner sits next to the deodorant. Yesterday I sprayed myself a face full of deodorant.

I’m thinking of pitching my life to a Hollywood producer as the plot for the next Dumb and Dumber movie.

Iron Pyriten Week

This year Golden Week was a bit of a rip-off. Rather than 9 days off (2 weekends book ending the intervening weekdays), Monday and Friday were workdays for most. Here’s the washout:

Friday
Cruelly abandoned by Mari, who went to visit a friend, I spent the day watching TV and touching up Winston’s World with pictures and a new template. One can waste hours on such nonsense.

Saturday
Concerned about my immobility of the day before, I went to the gym in the morning. In the afternoon I met up with Allan and went to the movies to see Constantine. After that I went to his place and we watched Hellboy and King Arthur on DVD. This finished about 2am, and so Allan’s couch was my bed for what remained of the evening.

The Movie Maven

Constantine
Constantine has a great 3rd act, but little idea how to get there. It reminds me of those Batman stories where the Joker has a great plan. But before the Joker can do this great plan, he believes that Batman must die. This is because Batman is the only one who can stop it. So the Joker sends some minions to do the deed, and when they fail, as they always do, Batman is now alerted that something nefarious is going on. Lo and behold, the great plan comes undone. If only the Joker had just gone through with the plan, he’d be rich and retired now.

For those who want to kill 2 hours.

Sunday
In the morning Allan and I had breakfast at a local family restaurant. From there we parted company and I went 2 stops down the line to Chica’s place. Chica was having her annual Golden Week BBQ. Last year I got sick on the day and so wasn’t able to go, so I was looking forward to it. Bumped into Mari at the station, and we walked to the party. On the way we stopped at a local small goods store to buy drinks and found that it stocked Hardys wine at the astonishingly cheap price of ¥430. Bought a red and a white for the day.





It took place on the banks of the local river, and although the sun wasn’t streaming down it was hot enough to give my baldpate a slight case of sunburn.



I believe that the women in this photo were not coerced in any way, and not drunk enough that they didn’t know what they were doing.

Monday
I had the day off, but Mari had to work. As I had no plans I wasted away the morning reading in a coffee shop. I decided to use the afternoon constructively and so went into work to get ahead on some things. I’m really glad I did as I have now caught up on where I’m expected to be work wise. I could now have good sleeps without worrying about work for the rest of Golden Week. When Mari finished we met up, hopped on the bullet train, and went to her parents’ house for 3 days.

Tuesday
Not much to report here. Relaxed, ate, read, played with Kairi. He’s saying many words now. They’re his version of the word – kutsu (shoes) is kuku, obaachan (grandmother) is baba and ojiichan (grandfather) is jiji – but you can understand him. There’s no verbs yet, just concrete nouns. There’s also a lot of screaming as Mari chases him round and round the living room / kitchen / hallway / living room. He runs around on his tiptoes and never gets tired of being chased. Even if the game is a complete setup because he’s pestered her to chase him, he still seems to get immense enjoyment from it.

Wednesday
Partook of that curiously female pastime - a day of shopping. Mari’s folks live in the countryside, so a trip to the brand name stores necessitates a drive to a bigger city. Mari, her big sister Yoshiko, her husband Shunpi, and I left Kairi with the grandparents and drove to Gotenba. Gotenba is an outdoor mall of brand name shops. This drive takes about 45mins, but during Golden Week that translates to almost 2 hours in the car. The scenery is nice though as Mt. Fuji is almost visible all the way there behind the houses, trees and elevated freeways that line the route. And should that get boring I can listen to Mari and Yoshiko’s conversation in Japanese. And then when I’ve had my fill of which Hollywood star is the sexiest, or which fashion magazine model really isn’t as pretty as she thinks she is, then I can read my book. The time simply flies by.



Once there I accompanied Mari while she did her reconnoiter of the place, looking for what she wanted, finding the various sales and doing the price comparisons. The four of us met up for lunch in what must be the most crowded food court in Japan. We stood around like vultures at a carcass waiting for a table to empty to that we could snatch it from under the noses all the other starving scavengers. Once we had full stomachs I decided that I would find a bench somewhere and read, leaving Mari to make the purchases on her own.



Thursday
Went to Izu-Mito Sea Paradise. I was pretty excited go there as along with the dolphins, seals, penguins and assortment of aquarium tanks, they have a killer whale! I’ve never seen a killer whale before, and so was deliriously happy to be able to see one penned for my amusement. My, it was a big creature. And able to jump it’s whole body length out of the water, too.

Friday
Back to work. 'Nuff said about that. But we did order scrumptious pizza for dinner. With the ability to call pizza to one’s door, the telephone has cemented its place as one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Saturday
Yesterday we both, for some reason, woke up with mild headaches. As we had leftover pizza to eat, there really was no need to go outside. But we lacked entertainment, so I volunteered to go and rent some DVDs. Mari likes to watch DVDs at home, but she’s not a lover of films. She tends to watch chick flicks, and sometimes the odd suspense or drama if there’s someone in it she likes, or the reviews were really good. Thus she’s got great holes in her viewing that I feel compelled to plug.

She’d never seen The Last of the Mohicans, which is a real favorite of mine. Daniel Day-Lewis is, as usual, great. And the film delivers enough action, intrigue and romance to keep everyone happy.

It’s hard to believe, but she’s also one of the few people in the world who has never seen Star Wars. She recalls that she might have seen one of the recent ones, but can’t be sure. No loss there as far as I’m concerned. After watching the final video for season 9 of Friends, we sat down to watch one of the true classics.

Except it wasn’t. I’d rented the digitally rehashed version and just found the tinkering too annoying. I think that it was a good idea to use the new SPFX techniques to touch up the SPFX from the original. Now with its seamless effects the attack on the Death Star looks so much cleaner than in the original. But in this new version there is also the inclusion of so many tiny scenes that are completely new and add nothing to the story. I’m thinking of the entry in Mos Eisley spaceport. I was surprised at how much the first half of the film now drags. I’d spent so much time talking the movie up before we watched it, that now I felt kind of stupid as I felt it begin to drag. The second half is still classic cinema, but now the first half is leaden, and glossy in a pixilated way that works against the verisimilitude it is trying to create. Computer generated monsters don’t look real. Elephants with rugs over them do.