Done with Mirrors

A familiar and favorite subject, there are probably a million of these mirrors in Japan. Their purpose is to assist drivers through blind intersections. I frequently walk past this particular one while I'm out walking with my daughter. Click to enlarge.



Oh, and have a Happy New Year!

Vending Machines, No. 15

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Cool Spider

There are a lot of big, cool-looking spiders in Miyazaki. Here's one of them (click to enlarge):

Bloody Fucking Hell

Of all the stupid, I mean really fucking stupid things, this has got to be the saddest, stupidest thing. Bloody fucking hell. Fuck.

Seagulls (2)

Continuing from the previous post (click to enlarge)...

Seagulls (1)

During a trip to Nagasaki last weekend we took a short ride on a ferry. As usual, where there's a combination of the sea, ships, people, and food there are usually a lot of seagulls flying and hovering around. There were so many that I figured it would be a simple matter to snap a few half-decent pics, but I soon found that the constant motion of the birds made this an almost impossible task.

In this post and the next I'm putting up six photos that I took, six out of over a hundred! I've mentioned before that I don't consider myself to be a "real" photographer (i.e. in any "professional" sense of the word), so I apologize if others don't quite share my enthusiasm for the photos I post here. Having said that, however, I think that my skills are slowly improving, especially in working with the "raw" pictures to turn out something that's (to me, at least!) pleasing to the eye.

Anyway, here are the first three (click to enlarge):

Blue Christmas

A little late, I guess, but here's my obligatory Christmas post, in the form of a present--a good tune.
Enjoy.

Vending Machines, No. 14

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Today...

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You Can Dig This Bull's Shit

You might never guess it, given my frequent ravings about death metal and such, but this is one my favorite tunes of all time:



And really, what's not to like? I mean, deep down, isn't it all just death metal?

It's the Real Thing

Yesterday morning I happened to be standing outside our local supermarket enjoying a tasty can of hot coffee that I'd just purchased from a vending machine (and which, coincidentally, happened to have the name "Tasty"). I was standing there drinking my coffee in a general daze when from around the corner of the building appeared an obaasan ("grandmother") riding a bicycle. On the back of the bike, riding shotgun, was her (I assumed) grandson. They were both wearing black surgical-type masks. (Many people in Japan wear this type of mask when they catch a cold or the flu, etc. I haven't seen many people wearing black ones...) Almost simultaneously a big red Coca Cola truck pulled up to the front of the vending machines...

The obaasan stops her bicycle pretty much directly in front of the entrance to the supermarket, and she and her grandson dismount. The kid heads into the store, and as he's doing so the woman mumbles something, grabs a shopping cart, and shoves it in after the kid just as the automatic doors are closing. As this is happening two guys are getting out of the Coke truck with the purpose of re-stocking the vending machines. The old woman, who now appeared to me to be almost certainly crazed, tugs down her mask, plants a cigarette between her lips, lights it up, and begins mumbling. The Coke truck guys and I are doing our best to pretend she doesn't exist...

Suddenly the woman breaks out of her mumble and begins directing her comments to the Coke guys. I could only glean the general gist of it, but she seemed agitated about the generally poor sanitation of the parking lot, which she seemed to be attributing to "no-good" taxi drivers emptying their ashtrays and "bad" kids throwing away their candy wrappers. The Coke guys are smiling and nodding as they re-stock the machines. I'm looking for my escape route. She glances in my direction and, momentarily startled, she realizes that I'm a foreigner. I begin calculating how many seconds the dash to my car would take...

The old woman quickly glances around and her eyes come to rest on the door of the Coke truck. "What's this?" she says to the two men, pointing at the door, which has the familiar "Enjoy Coca Cola" logo emblazoned upon it. "It's kind of strange, isn't it?" Oh my, I think to myself, she's a wily one. Since they've been addressed directly, the Coke guys are bound by politeness to respond. "What do you mean?" they ask. Here it comes, I'm thinking. She takes a step toward the truck, thrusts out her arm, and places her index finger squarely on the "j" of "Enjoy", and asks, "Why is there a "period" over this letter? That's wrong, isn't it?"

I felt like I'd just been punched in the face. I was stunned. The Coke guys were dumbfounded, jaws a-droop. As galaxies to stars, so was this woman's evil to that of ordinary folk. It was at that very moment that her nefarious intent made itself manifest. The Coke guys, as one, turned and looked at me...

I smiled at the Coke guys and shrugged. I finished my coffee, deposited the can in the recycle bin, and walked to my car. I drove to work.

A Murder of Crows

Well, maybe not quite a murder... Click to enlarge.

Umm...

Click to enlarge (if you insist...).



Heh, yeah... Umm, moving right along...

Vending Machines, No. 13

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(S)He Memes Well...

My blogging friend (and closet leg pervert!) Absolute Vanilla has tagged me with some sort of "viral story" meme-type thingie.

Here are the terms & conditions (apparently from Splotchy, the originator):

"This has probably been done before, but that is not stopping me, oh no.
Here’s what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don’t know how realistic it is, but that’s what I’m aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it’s okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that’s five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.”

I woke up hungry. I pulled my bedroom curtain to the side and looked out on a hazy morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen, in search of something to eat. I reached for a jar of applesauce sitting next to the sink, and found it very cold to the touch. I opened the jar and realized it was frozen. (Splotchy)

My first idea was to put the applesauce in the microwave. Hey, I was still tired. Could I scoop some out and put whipped cream on it? No, too solid. Why was it so damn cold in here? I walked over to the thermostat and saw that the heat hadn’t clicked on all night and the temperature had dropped substantially overnight. Now, tired and hungry, I opened the access panel on the heater. There’s the problem: why was someone cooking a duck in here? (SamuraiFrog)

I grabbed the bird and bit into a leg. It tasted like cheese. Or chicken. What kind of weird duck was this? I spat out the rancid meat and threw the rest of the duck in the bin.
Jackson strode into the kitchen, his short dreadlocks bouncing lightly around his face.
“Is my duck ready yet?” he said as he turned towards me. “Hey man, put some clothes on!”
Shit, I had forgotten to put on my boxers. (PJ)

Which explained why I was so damned cold. I grabbed a tea towel and tried to make myself look half decent.
Jackson snorted, "You'd do better with a fig leaf!" Yeah, well, whatever.
"So, where's my bird?" Jackson asked.
"In the bin," I snapped, "where it should be - thing died long, long ago."
"You binned my bird?" Jackson's eyes had started to bulge with rage. "Why you..."
"It would've killed you," I yelled as he lunged at me, the breadknife in his hand. "Damn! It was only an off-duck!" (Absolute Vanilla)

"An off-duck? Fuck off," he screamed, his arm poised to bring the knife plunging down into the general direction of my now racing heart. He stopped short.
"Hey, isn't that tea towel part of the set my auntie gave to me last year?"
"Er, yeah, I guess so..."
"What the fuck are you doing covering your ding-a-ling with it?"
"My "ding-a-ling"...?"
"Yeah, your prick, arsehole. Jesus, you never heard of Chuck Berry?"
I'm naked, I'm covering my "ding-a-ling" with Jackson's auntie's tea towel, and I've just binned his bird.
The doorbell rang. (Kyklops)

I tag (out of sheer spite and/or revenge):
Pierre
Maht
Glenn
Brendan
The Usual Stuff

Unfinished Sweet

Ack... In a few minutes I'll be making my 18th trip to the dentist's since September. Extractions, root canals, filing, grinding, drilling, scraping, digging, needles injected directly into exposed nerves, the indignity of being "taught" how to brush my teeth correctly...

I grow weary...

Yet More Black and Whites

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Girl and Boy

Taken recently at a park in Miyazaki (Shiminomori Koen). Click to enlarge.

Kant Be Done...

Last night I had this dream...

Public Gardens of Halifax

Busy, busy, busy!! Too busy right now to be giving much attention to blogging. This should change soon. In the meantime, some pics of Halifax's Public Gardens taken during my (now not-so-recent) trip back home in the summer (click to enlarge):

Vending Machines, No. 12

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Manila

It's almost too much for my senses to take in, let alone absorb...

In the parking area of my hotel I saw a "traffic control" guy wearing a gun. Just outside the hotel's entrance there was a military guy with a "sniffing" dog checking luggage for drugs and/or explosive materials. Entering the hotel I had to pass through a metal detector and have my shoulder bag scanned for anything dangerous. Later, while walking around, I saw a guard with a machine gun standing outside a different hotel. Entering a shopping center I had to pass through another security checkpoint...

Manila seems like some kind of radical capitalist's wet dream. There are "money changers" everywhere. In just a couple of hours walking in the area around my hotel I was approached at least 20 times by different people offering to sell me a wide variety of stuff--cigarettes, flowers, "gold" coins, food items, watches ("Rolex", "Omega", etc.). One guy had "Cialis" and "Viagara" on offer. I'm fairly certain that most the "name" items were fake, but I didn't really look too closely...

I had a great lunch at an outdoor shop--"chicken diablo" (very spicy and tasty) and a couple of San Miguel beers. It cost about three dollars, including the beer. In my hotel it costs about eight bucks for a beer...

This evening while having a beer outside a bar, an old lady approached me shaking a tin cup and making hand-to-mouth gestures. She wanted some coins. A few minutes later a five-year-old girl did the same. A few more minutes later a young woman (I think a teenager) holding a baby...

Earlier I had noticed that there seemed to be a lot of naked little kids wandering around. I saw one of them take a shit on a piece of newspaper that his mother had placed on the sidewalk. I saw another little kid, naked and apparently alone, sleeping on the sidewalk...

Everyone here calls me "sir". It's a bit unsettling...

Manila seems very alive. In fact, it seems like the essence of life itself...

Opening Salvo

Heh, cool. My first blog post from a hotel room. And I'm drinking beer, too! You'd think an almost-50-year-old guy could think of something a bit more... reflective to say on such an auspicious occasion, but fuck it. I've decided that I rather like blogging and drinking in hotel rooms, and I don't care what the neighbors might think...

[Note to self: it's all fine and dandy to have rockin' tunes on the laptop, but next time you'll have to remember that laptops have crap speakers... more beer might "fix" the problem, though...]

Great song title (and pretty good tune, too): ZZ Top: "A Fool for Your Stockings".

Fukuoka is a good, fun city (about the same size as Vancouver), and I recommend it to anybody visiting Kyushu, but I've been here a million times. Bring on Manila!

You already knew this: Repeated listening has led me to believe that Dream Syndicate must have heard a few Velvet Underground albums...

A good friend told me that when he was in Manila one time the band Rage Against the Machine was staying at the same hotel. In the hotel lobby they had a sign that read "Welcome, Rage Against the Machine!" Thinking about this induces the giggles...

This is why the Japanese will conquer the world (thanks Japan Probe):



----------
For all the talk about the iphone, I can't think of a single reason why anyone in Japan would want to buy one--collectors aside (and really, compared to what's available here, it's an antique). (Prompted by my purchase yesterday of a new keitai).

Chuck Berry's "Nadine" must surely be ranked among the greatest performances of all time. Chuck fuckin' Berry! Ouch!

More ZZ Top: "Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell". You know, back in my drum-playin' daze, ZZ Top had almost god-like status. Not because they were "fashionable", and not because they were "cutting edge" (although Eliminator, in my opinion, ranks as one of the most ground-breaking rock albums of all-time). No, ZZ Top just played like everyone else could only dream of playing, they were every rocker's favorite band...

Ahh... The Yardbirds... now there was a band...

Early flight tomorrow, must sleep...

Parting Shots

In about an hour I'm going to Fukuoka and then tomorrow morning I'm off to Manila for a few days. I'm taking my laptop for this trip, so I might do some blogging from abroad (assuming I have something to say about anything).

Anyway, a couple of parting shots (click to enlarge)...

[NOTE: I've just become aware that Blogger is experiencing some sort of glitch in which, if you click newer photos, you'll be prompted to download them in order to view them. Please be advised that it's not malware or any other sinister stuff. It's perfectly safe to download the pics if you like. (Thanks Brendan.)]

[Update: The issue appears to have been resolved.]

Vending Machines, No. 11

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Some Random Black and Whites

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Phriday Philosophy and Phootball

Hell, why not?

Vending Machines, No. 10

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The Cell Phone Camera and Its Myriad Uses

The weather is beginning to get a bit cool here in Miyazaki, which means it's time to re-calibrate my air conditioner to start blowing warm air. And while this might strike the unsuspecting reader as a pretty mundane sort of task, it is, in fact, a twice-a-year exercise in annoyance and frustration for me. Why? Well, because the air conditioner's remote control buttons and settings are in Japanese, that's why. In the past I've put on a brave face and hauled out my dictionaries and, through a tiring process of trial and error, tried to work out the arcane workings of this most cursed of devices. The sin of pride, you see, has kept me from simply asking someone who actually knows Japanese (and believe me, there's certainly no shortage of such people in these parts) to turn on the air conditioner for me. No, much like the proverbial man who turns a deaf ear to his wife's desperate entreaties to "just stop and fucking ask someone for directions, will you?", I refused to bow to the reality of my utter incompetence in reading Japanese...

... until the other day. I'd been pondering this problem when, of a sudden, it struck me: "idiot, you've got a Japanese lesson today, why not ask your teacher?" Why not, indeed. After all, this is a business relationship, so it's not quite the same as groveling on my stomach in the hall outside my office in the hope someone will notice me and take pity. I was dazzled by the sheer simplicity of my own genius! When my teacher came by my office later that day I asked her straight out, "how the hell does this thing work and can you please write it on the whiteboard in a form I can understand?" As I said, this is a business relationship, precluding any visible sign of contempt she may have secretly harbored toward one so pathetic he can't even turn on the fucking air conditioner without help. Like a true professional she complied with my request, even offering a few explanatory comments and a demonstration of how to use the remote control (the last, perhaps, bordered on insolence; but it also could simply have been an eagerness to help...).

Anyway, at the end of my lesson not only did I now know how to order a burger and fries in Japanese, I had at my disposal the means to control the temperature of my office! As soon as my teacher left I took a picture of the whiteboard with my cell phone, uploaded it into my computer, and then printed it off. Hah! No more chilly days in my office! Yes indeed, I'll surely enjoy working in my nicely heated office. At least until spring...

Vending Machines, No. 9

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Horses of Cape Toi

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, last Sunday my family and I took a drive down the coast of Miyazaki. Our ultimate destination was a Toinomisaki (Cape Toi), which is famous for the wild horses that graze there. Here are some pics of a few of the horses (click to enlarge):

Slide

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Yeah, Right...

What's that old "Chinese proverb"? Something like, "It's better to keep one's mouth shut and appear to be a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt"? Or was it, "He who farts in church sits in pew"? I forget... Anyway, somewhere some squirrels running on exercise wheels squeezed out a few bingo balls and, as if by magic, translated the findings into a bunch of 0's and 1's and deemed the content of this blog to be of such a high level that only a genius could possibly comprehend it. I have, in my oh-so-subtle way, been trying to convince everybody of this fact for several months now. What's that old Klingon saying? "Revenge is a dish best served cold"? Or was it, "He who laughs last, laughs best"? I don't know, whatever it was I think that, on this auspicious occasion, it's quite appropriate. I mean, you know what they say in Japan: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Or was it "The squeaky wheel gets the grease"? Fucked if I know and, as that great sage of our age, Yosemite Sam, is fond of saying, "It don't make no no-how to me anyhow"...

[H/T: Glenn]

Vending Machines, No. 8

In black and white (click to enlarge)...

Ocean and Coast (2)

Continuing from the previous post (click to enlarge)...