Greetings from Japan, where sitting down onto a pre-warmed toilet seat gives one comfort, not discomfort.
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The weekend of July 1, we went to Kyoto. The American equivalent of Kyoto is maybe Washington DC, where there are historical points of interest throughout the city. Kyoto used to be the capitol of Japan, but now it's mostly a tourism and university town. There are more temples and shrines than you can see in a weekend, so we'll probably go back.

We stayed in a Ryokan, or traditional Japanese traveler's inn. Most are family run and the family lives on site as well. Ours was lower scale, as they can get quite fancy. We slept on futons on the tatami floors, and took nice hot baths in the shared tub. It was great.

Some photos.






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Going to so many temples and shrines, I must have caught some of the Buddhist mindset of giving no value to physical goods. In a fit of Zen, I passed the camera off to the kids to do most of the documenting of our trip. And they did just fine.

The results are below, narrated by the artists.

Veronica's first.



And now Zane's

Greetings from Japan, where the denominations of paper money are slightly different sizes, for the benefit of blind people. Smart!

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In late June our sea shipment arrived, so we have FURNITURE now! Also included was my new wide angle lens, which makes our furnished home look cavernous. It's comfortable, but not as huge as it seems here.
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Veronica on the last day of school.













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There are products over here not available in the states. No surprises there. But I recently was made aware of the Japanese enjoyment of eye drops. Very powerful eye drops.
Zane has allergies. And they are worse over here, especially if we ride the subway. I think it’s the mold in the tunnels. We had some soothing eye drops that I brought from the states, and when we were getting low, I went shopping for some local variety. I knew about the powerful eye drops over here, so I made sure to avoid packaging which suggested power or activity. I looked for packaging suggesting comfort and soothing.
The ones I found were from Visine, trusted brand. They said ‘cool’ something-something on the package. Sounds nice and soothing. Well, I tested them on myself before giving them to Zane. Turns out the ‘cool’ described in the packaging is like the cool sensation of mouthwash. Like putting minty fresh Listerine in your eyes. Actually it was only one eye. I stopped there. My testing was complete. I knew enough to not give this to anyone, unless I can put it in a spray bottle and use it like mace.

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These picutres are from our visit to Toyota City’s Kuragaike park. We went for our Father’s Day outing. It was lovely. If you know me, you know that I enjoy a lovely paddle on the water. Kayak, inner tube, canoe, I like it all. So when I saw rowboats for rent, I was happy. Kathleen was also happy. Happy to stay ashore and take pictures.

Later in our voyage, the oars were handed over to the kids to give their dad a nice Father’s Day trip around the lake. I didn’t know it at the time, but to look at our vessel, it appears that our cargo is a bit unbalanced with me in the rear of the boat. Our Father’s Day rowboat nearly went the way of Melvilles’ Pequod. Seems like our weight is unbalanced toward the aft. Yes, it might be that the boat has a fat aft aboard, indeed.

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This badger or hedgehog or whatever has to be addressed. I can no longer withhold comment. The little guy is everywhere. Especially near the front doors of restaurants. But often also outside the front doors of private homes. In our neighborhood about one house in 5 has him gracing the front porch. He is (I’ve heard) a symbol of hospitality and good luck.

I really like him, mostly because of his… let’s call it immodesty. He lets it all hang out, literally. This little version of him was part of my Father’s Day gift from Kathleen. The more common version of him is about 18 inches tall and standing up.

Here’s one in Kyoto. But he’s everywhere. As you can see, he stands very stably, supported by two big feet and two big… Yes, his very personal parcel is very large, and very evident, and resting on the ground as he stands. And to the Japanese, this means hospitality and good fortune? OK. Well, in colonial American architecture the image of a pineapple was the symbol that hospitality is found within. Does that make any better sense? Neither of them make any sense, but at least the pineapple wouldn’t benefit from a nice pair of pants.

Maybe it works like this. The badger means that there are nice people inside. People so nice that even a naked badger with an embarrassing case of elephantitis is welcome.

So we’ve named him. I call him “Sacky the Badger”. If anyone wants one, please let me know. We can start a new trend in America of having anatomically exaggerated animals on your front porches.

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If you believe everything you read, better not read - Japanese Proverb.

Greetings from Japan, where umbrellas are everywhere. The Japanese carry them in heavy rains, light rains, light sprinkles, misty drizzles, and sometimes just when the clouds looks especially ominous. There are umbrella racks in the entryway into every public building, store, and office. There are always umbrellas in those racks. With the slightest mist coming down, everyone walking outside, to a person, has an open umbrella with them. The time that it's easiest to spot the foreigners in public is when there is a light mist. Just look for people without umbrellas. Do the Japanese wear raincoats? Nope. Slickers with hoods? Nope. Only umbrellas. That’s just what they do. Even when riding a bike to work. Umbrella in one hand, handlebars in the other. (Or sometimes umbrella in one hand, cell phone in the other, handlebars as needed.)

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Clearly these are digitally retouched photos of Z & V. No self-respecting son of a firefighter would let his kids play with sparklers. (Thanks to our neighbors for sharing!)

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My company has a ‘healthy in one year’ campaign. Of course they mean the fiscal year from 4/2006 through 3/2007. You and your Western-centric Gregorian calendar. My company says the year goes from 4/1 through 3/31, and so that’s the year.

They encourage everyone to stop smoking, eat well and get the body mass index below 24.2. Why is that the magic number? I have no idea. How do they 'encourage'? Well, there are posters in the common areas at work. An occasional company wide email to promote some company-sponsored weekend healthy activity. Oh yeah, and the company monitors what the employees are eating in the cafeteria. Down to the dish.

The cafeteria is paid for out of the employee’s salary. Each plate or bowl has a magnetic id inside. After you eat, you carry your tray with the empty dishes up to a reader. The tray bearing the dishes is set onto a reader on your way out of the cafeteria, it tells you how much it costs, then you swipe your employee badge to charge the meal against next month’s salary. (Of course, a system which rewards you financially for leaving a mess of dishes behind you on your table would probably not work in the US. The thought has probably never occurred to anyone here.)

I found recently that not only is that system used to charge your meals against your salary, but they are also monitoring your caloric intake. Is it all for my benefit, or is it a bit of ‘big brother’? Maybe somewhere in between. I think my BMI is near the 24.2 target right now. So they will still let me in the cafeteria.

And luckily the snack shop right outside the cafeteria where yummy ice cream sandwiches are only 100yen, and don’t show up on the big brother food monitor. Ice cream sammiches back home have ice cream between that chalky chocolate-ish, stick-to-your-teeth stuff. The Japanese show their superiority once again. Why not house your ice cream in ice cream cone material? It’s perfect, and perfectly delicious. No muss, no fuss, and my tummy thinks I just ate an ice cream cone! Genius!

BMI 35.5 here I come!… Maybe I should start smoking to control my weight….

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Some photos of a day trip to a ceramics village, where there streets and walls are often constructed from pottery pieces. There was a big buddha we saw on the drive down. So we stopped to get a closer look. He got a look at us, as well.



Getting money is like digging with a needle. Spending it is like water soaking into the sand.
- Japanese proverb.

(Digging with a needle? How about eating rice grains with sticks!)

Greetings from Japan, where people are typically reserved and polite, until they get to a baseball game. (They might stay polite, but they sing chant and bong noisemakers all game long. C’mon people, I can’t hear myself drink over here!)

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A benefit of having a Japanese computer: The bad English language comedy. I love that they try to work with the foreigners, I really do. But you'd think that they might ask a foreigner ever so often to proofread their stuff.
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Eye-spy for novices: find the foreigner in OsuKannon.

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Zane's class had a field trip to a rice farm. Zane was the first one in the mud and the last one out.

First photo: a glimpse of the new white sandal. Second photo: After the rice field claimed his sandal for its own.


A field trip where there is mud? What a school!

Leave it to Zane to get up to his elbows in ankle-deep mud.

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So as you might imagine, the Japanese sort their garbage. (And I don’t just mean that they send Yoko Ono to America.) They really sort their garbage. They sort it like it’s their job. I think they’ve petitioned the Olympic committee to make it an exhibition sport in the 2012 games.

As a Nagoya resident, I must sort my refuse into the following major categories: 1)Recyclable, 2)Burnable, and 3)Non Burnable. Easy, right? Wrong. They’re just getting warmed up. Within Recyclable, we separate into: Paperboard packaging, Plastic Packaging, PET drink bottles, Cans, Glass, Cardboard and newspaper and Milk cartons. And as the song goes, "You gotta keep 'em separated."

Each classification gets its own blue bag, except for the glass, cardboard, newspaper and your milk cartons. By the way, there are not jugs of milk in Japan. Milk comes in liter (translated: quart) sized cartons which you cannot just put in with the paperboard recycling. You must rinse them out, cut them up to lie flat, and take them back to the grocery store and put them in a bin. After I moved here and was living on my own, I had 4 empty milk cartons in my fridge because I hadn't figured out what to do with them. I considered switching to putting boubon on my cereal because those empties I could manage.

Everything you buy has a symbol on the packaging saying what type of container it is, and which category it falls into. It’s actually pretty noble. All packaging has to have a stream it goes into. Nothing can be sold unless there is a way to manage the packaging. I’ve only been here a little while and it’s affectected me as a consumer. I don’t want to buy glass because it’s going to be a pain to store it somewhere and take it down to get recycled. And they sell a lot of refill bags for things you might keep in bottles. Like your instant coffee. You can buy a refill bag of exactly the same size as the glass bottle you’ve just used up. Then you just have the bag to recycle. Nice! (Except the refill bag also costs exactly the same as the new bottle. Strange. No bulk-buying discount here.)

And there is a cost to consume. Not much, but the color-coded bags all cost money. (Maybe 10 cents per bag, but it’s something.)
They are far ahead of where we are as Americans, if purely because of necessity. When we’re all out of landfill space maybe we’ll have to start requiring recycling, instead of just suggesting it.
I haven’t figured the whole thing out yet, though. There are some things which don’t fit well into the available categories.

A used Q-tip: Recyclable paperboard? Burnable?
A broken rubber band: Plastic packaging? Non-burnable?
Belly button lint: never mind… I keep that to make lint art and sell it on Ebay.

Think this packaging management is all lovely and perfect? A utopian society? Think again.

Enter the cockroach.

(Not yet at my house, knock on bamboo.)
After I had been given the tour of the property and the ‘how to operate the __________” orientation from the relocation agent, she turned to the back of the ‘Welcome Guide’. A page on cockroaches. She explained that as new construction there would be little chance of an infestation in this building. Right. Until we have food-tainted milk cartons, tuna cans and takeout containers in twelve different bags in the kitchen awaiting the designated recycling day. And so do our neighbors.

The agent said that if we start to have a problem we just call them and they’ll bring over an ultrasonic deterrent you plug into the wall. Right. Aren’t those sold in the coupon pack in the newspapers along side the elastic waist casual slacks and the tomato tree?
I’m thinking about how to make a strong first salvo against any invading roach force. I’ve looked in the stores here briefly, and haven’t seen anything that has the chemical firepower I’m after. I’ll have to get it in the States. Seems like the Japanese are a bit soft on roach control. Hey, as long as the bugs take off their shoes before they enter the house, they’re clean, right?